IMAGINARY   OBLIGATIONS 


IMAGINARY 
OBLIGATIONS 

By 
FRANK    MOORE    COLBY 


NEW  YORK 
DODD,   MEAD  &  COMPANY 


' 


IENERAL 


(I  ! 

Copyright,  1904 
Py  DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 

Published  September,  1904 


PREFACE 

I  PRESUME  it  will  not  be  denied  that  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  conscience  is  apt  to  encroach  on  the  zone 
of  moral  indifference.  We  are  a  hortatory  peo 
ple,  forever  laying  down  the  law  in  a  region 
where  diversity  is  most  desirable.  Apparently 
we  would  rather  teach  than  live ;  we  count  votes 
even  in  our  dreams ;  and  we  suppress  nine-tenths 
of  our  thoughts  for  fear  of  seeming  incorrect. 
We  are  sometimes  frank  in  private,  but  coram 
populo  our  souls  are  not  our  own.  In  proof 
whereof  see  any  magazine  or  newspaper  or  almost 
any  current  book  or  play,  and  mark  especially 
the  amazing  difference  between  public  speeches 
and  private  thoughts.  There  are  the  romantics 
of  politics,  and  the  self-concealment  of  debate, 
and  the  duty  to  the  crowd,  and  the  duty  to  the 
coterie,  and  the  duty  to  the  time  of  day,  and  the 


PREFACE 

constraint  of  success,  and  the  fear  of  being  mis 
understood,  and  the  care  of  the  universe,  and  the 
hundred  other  anxieties  that  make  up  our  chief 
imaginary  obligation  to  seem  something  different 
from  what  we  are — something  wiser  or  more 
sententious  or  more  brilliant  or  more  reasonable 
and  educational,  something  far  less  human  and 
infinitely  less  absurd.  We  cannot  even  see  a  man 
with  a  book  without  worrying  over  the  effect  it 
may  have  on  him,  and  we  would  turn  every  critic 
into  a  sort  of  literary  legislator.  We  try  to 
compel  good  taste  and  the  harmless  word  "cul 
ture"  has  already  acquired  a  grim  and  horrid 
sound.  On  the  lightest  of  matters  we  lay  the 
heaviest  of  hands.  At  every  point  our  indefati 
gable  instructors  would  substitute  a  formula  for 
a  vital  process.  Our  fancied  obligations  to  these 
little  formulas  are  for  the  most  part  the  subject 
of  this  book,  which  is  made  up  of  certain  news 
paper  and  magazine  articles,  edited  and  rear 
ranged.  The  topics  discussed  are  transitory, 
but  they  are  bound  to  recur,  and  the  writings 
quoted  are  evanescent  but  they  are  of  a  kind  that 


PREFACE 

often  return.  I  have  written  about  them  because 
I  enjoyed  their  absurdity,  but  incidentally  they 
may  show  why  so  many  of  us  grow  old  rigidly  or 
develop  an  alarming  spiritual  pomposity  in  our 
middle  age. 


CONTENTS 

i 

ON   LITERARY    COMPULSION 
i     BOOKS  WE  HAVEN'T  BEAD  1 

II  A  PROBLEM  OF  CULTURE  7 

in  LITERARY  BURROWING  13 

IV  THE  DIFFIDENCE  OF  PRINT  17 

V  THE  WRITER  WHO  DOES  NOT  CARE  25 

VI  THE  LITERARY  TEMPERAMENT  33 

II 

THE    CROWDED    FORUM 


I     THE  NATIONAL  ANGLE  40 

"AMERICANISM"  49 

CONCERNING  HEROES  54 

iv     A  "REMARKABLE"  MAN  60 

V       OLD    AND    NEW    DEBATERS  64 

VI       ASPERITIES    OF    PEACEMAKING  70 

VH       MEASURING      AN      AMERICAN  REPUTA 

TION  77 

VIII       DEMOCRATIC    GENTILITY  83 

III 

THE    FRIGHTENED    MINORITY 

I       SETTING    THE    PACE  88 

H       THE    WALK    UPTOWN  95 


CONTENTS 

III  THE    READING    PUBLIC  99 

IV  REFORMERS    AND    BROOMSTICKS  109 

IV 
ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

I  ON    SEEING    TEN    BAD    PLAYS  118 

II  THE    SPAN    OF    THE    STAGE  128 

III  ON    CERTAIN    "PROBLEM"    PLAYS  134 

IV  CONVENTIONAL    PLAYS  145 
V       PRIVATE    TASTES    AND    PRINTED    CRITI 
CISM  151 

V 

RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

I       BACCALAUREATE    SERMONS  167 

II  THE    SIGNIFICANCE    OF    FRESHMEN  172 

III  THE    CO-EDUCATION    SCARE  178 

IV  THE    TRAINED    WOMAN  182 
V       EDUCATIONAL    EMOTIONS  189 

VI       INNER    CIRCLES  194 

VI 

ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

I       THE    DRIER    CRITICISM  200 

II  PAINSTAKING    ILLITERACY  205 

III  THE    HAND    OF    PROVIDENCE  210 

IV  NOTHING    NEW  216 
V        LITERARY    ANALYSIS  221 

VI       OUTDOOR    PEDANTRY  226 

VH        A  POPULARIZER  234 


CONTENTS 

VII 
MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

I       THE    SUMMER    EXPERIMENT  239 

II       THE    PEOPLE    NEXT    DOOR  244 

III  THE    CHEERFUL    GIVER  249 

IV  THE    SERIOUS    WOMAN  254 
V       MUSIC    AT    MEALS  260 

VIII 
THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

I        LITERARY    REPUTATIONS  265 

II       THE    PRAISE    OF    MINOR    AUTHORS  271 

III  THE    PHRASEMAKEE  279 

IV  THE    PURSUIT    OF    HUMOR  284 
V       THE    TEMPTATION    OF    AUTHORS  289 

VI       THE    JOURNALIST    AND    HIS     BETTERS  99,5 

VII       RUNNING    AN    ORACLE  301 

VIII       FOR    WOMAN    AND    THE    HOME  306 

IX       ON    BEHALF    OF    OBSCURE    VERSE  315 

X       IN    DARKEST    JAMES  321 


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PART  I 


ON   LITERARY  COMPUL 
SION 


BOOKS    WE   HAVEN'T    READ 

A  WRITER  on  French  literature  contrasts  the  cul 
tivated  Frenchman's  definite  knowledge  of  his 
own  classics  with  the  miscellaneous  reading  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  of  the  same  class.  In  France  there 
are  certain  things  that  people  with  a  taste  for 
reading  are  supposed  to  know,  and  do  know. 
With  us  there  is  no  safety  in  this  assumption. 
The  greater  variety  of  our  literature  and  the 
flexibility  of  our  standards  account  in  his  opinion 
for  the  difference.  It  is  a  comfortable  way  of 
putting  the  thing,  and  we  need  the  suggestion, 
for  we  are  always  setting  up  standards  in  this 
1 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

matter  and  tormenting  ourselves  and  others  for 
non-conformity.  The  truth  is  there  are  nine  and 
sixty  ways  of  reading  our  tribal  lays  as  well 
as  of  making  them.  There  is  no  path  in  reading 
which  we  can  safely  advise  another  grown-up 
Anglo-Saxon  person  to  follow,  and  there  is  no 
single  book  for  not  reading  which  he  can  de 
servedly  be  brought  to  shame.  Yet,  for  certain 
neglects  of  this  sort  we  actually  persecute.  It 
is  a  mild  form  of  persecution,  but  it  causes 
needless  suffering  and,  what  is  worse,  it  begets 
lies. 

Pride  of  reading  is  a  terrible  thing.  There 
are  certain  literary  sets  in  which  the  book  is  an 
instrument  of  tyranny.  If  you  have  not  read 
it  you  are  made  to  feel  unspeakably  abject,  for 
the  book  you  have  not  read  is  always  the  one 
book  in  the  world  that  you  should  have  read. 
It  is  the  sole  test  of  literary  insight,  good  taste 
and  mental  worth.  To  confess  that  you  have 
not  read  it  is  to  expose  yourself  as  an  illiterate 
person.  It  is  like  admitting  that  you  have 
never  eaten  with  a  fork.  Now,  when  this  social 


ON   LITERARY   COMPULSION 

pressure  is  brought  to  bear  upon  a  man,  what 
happens?  This  depends  on  his  moral  character. 
If  there  is  a  flaw  in  it  anywhere,  it  breaks  down. 
Weak,  sensitive  persons  will  invariably  stammer 
out  a  lie.  The  temptation  to  escape  the  ignom 
iny  is  irresistible.  The  have-reads  are  hard,  in 
solent  and  cruelly  triumphant.  The  haven't- 
reads  feel  that  they  must  either  tell  lies  or  slink 
away.  Then  there  are  all  sorts  of  miserable 
compromises.  Without  actually  saying  that  he 
has  read  one  of  the  obligatory  books,  a  weak 
character  will  act  as  if  he  had.  He  ven 
tures  a  few  of  those  vague,  universal  com 
ments  which  he  knows  are  bound  to  be  true  of 
anything,  anywhere.  But  it  is  a  wretched  piece 
of  business,  and  most  harrowing  to  the  nerves. 
The  awful  fidgetiness  of  a  poor  baited  unread 
man,  when  he  thinks  he  is  being  cornered,  is 
pitiful  to  see.  Next  comes  the  stage  of  involun 
tary  deceit.  By  talking  about  books  as  if  he  had 
read  them  he  comes  to  think  that  he  has.  He 
uses  third-hand  quotations  as  if  they  were  his 
own.  At  this  point  humbug  enters  the  heart; 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

the  mind,  as  you  might  say,  becomes  encrusted 
with  its  own  pretence.  Finally,  there  is  literary 
second  childishness,  oblivion  and  death.  Some 
choose  the  more  virtuous  course  by  reading  books 
just  to  say  they  have  read  them,  thereby  saving 
their  souls,  perhaps,  but  certainly  swamping 
their  intellects. 

All  this  in  a  field  where  you  can  do  and  say 
exactly  what  you  please,  where  there  is  even  a 
premium  on  a  whim.  Where  is  the  sanction  for 
these  grim  obligations  ?  How  big  a  bibliography 
goes  to  make  a  man  of  culture  ?  What  course  of 
summer  reading  would  have  been  equally  suitable 
for  Carlyle  and  Charles  Lamb?  A  list  of  our 
unread  books  torments  some  of  us  like  a  list  of 
murders.  Yet  it  is  not  they  but  the  books  we 
have  read  that  will  accuse  us.  Just  here  we  find 
a  consolation.  Frankly  confessed  ignorance  of 
a  book  never  bores  any  one  and  does  no  harm. 
Ignorance  of  books  is  not  infectious,  but  sham 
knowledge  of  them  is.  The  real  offence  is  read 
ing  in  such  a  way  that  it  leaves  you  the  worse  for 
it.  One  would  rather  hear  some  men  talk  about 
* 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

the  vegetables  they  had  eaten  than  the  books  they 
had  read.  They  put  more  real  feeling  into  it.  A 
small  vitality  may  be  smothered  by  much  read 
ing,  and  the  book-talk  of  these  people  is  the 
author's  deadliest  foe.  The  books  we  have  not 
read  may  be  another  way  of  saying  the  authors 
we  have  not  injured.  The  reader  is  so  often  un 
worthy  of  the  book. 

We  need  all  the  comfort  we  can  get.  Small 
literary  ambitions  trip  up  many  of  us  every  day. 
Many  a  man  lives  beyond  his  literary  income 
from  an  absurd  kind  of  book  pride.  Why  should 
we  not  own  up  like  Darwin — change  the  subject 
to  earthworms  if  they  interest  us  more?  There 
was  more  "literary  merit"  in  what  he  said  of 
earthworms  than  in  what  most  of  us  say  about 
belles-lettres.  It  is  not  the  topic  that  gives  the 
literary  quality.  And  we  never  can  finish  our 
course  of  reading.  We  shall  all  be  tucked 
away  in  our  graves  with  a  long  list  of  good 
things  still  unread.  But  if  we  have  not  lied 
about  these  or  humbugged  ourselves  about  the 
others  or  staled  any  good  man's  memory  by 
6 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

feeble-minded  repetitions,  we  may  be  saved. 
Otherwise  we  shall  be  snubbed  by  every  author 
across  the  Styx.  And  if  the  only  thing  a  multi 
tude  of  books  have  done  for  a  man  is  to  enable 
him  to  mention  them  and  quote  them  and  appear 
to  be  in  the  "literary  swim,"  he  is  no  fit  person 
for  the  company  of  honest  authors.  He  does  not 
belong  in  Arcadia  at  all,  but  behind  the  counter 
in  a  retail  book-shop,  where  there  is  a  good  busi 
ness  reason  for  plaguing  other  people  about  the 
books  they  haveiti't  read.  By  these  and  kindred 
reflections  we  may  console  ourselves  in  part  for 
our  deficiencies  and  ward  off  the  temptation  of 
the  sham. 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

II 

A    PROBLEM    OF    "CULTURE" 

EVERY  little  while  there  appears  an  article  on 
current  American  literature  that  takes  all  the 
hope  and  self-confidence  out  of  you — that  is,  if 
you  had  any  idea  of  keeping  up  with  the  times. 
There  are  so  many  authors  that  the  writer  knows 
and  you  do  not.  Sometimes  you  never  heard  their 
names  at  all.  Sometimes  vyou  have  heard  their 
names  and  nothing  more.  Then  comes  this  ter 
ribly  well-informed  person  implying  in  every 
thing  he  says  that  greatness  in  a  dozen  different 
fields  has  wholly  escaped  your  notice.  Poets 
piping  the  sweetest  kind  of  things  at  your  very 
doors,  and  you  never  hear  them.  Stupendous 
"local  color"  work  going  on  at  every  railway 
junction,  and  you  heed  it  not.  I  have  been  read 
ing  an  article  of  this  kind  in  one  of  our  most 
serious  magazines.  It  deals  with  the  progress  of 
literature  in  the  southern  states,  and  though  the 
writer  says  he  leaves  out  many  names  of  equal 
importance  with  those  mentioned,  he  goes  far 
7 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

enough  to  convince  you  that  you  must  always 
remain  illiterate.  There  is  no  chance  of  catch^ 
ing  up  now. 

Here,  for  example,  is  a  mere  fraction  of  the 
literature  that  is  waiting  for  you  in  the  several 
states.  In  Kentucky  there  is  a  school  of  lyric 
poetry,  "quite  unique,  with  Mr.  Lane,  Mr.  Cox, 
Mr.  Johnson  and  Mr.  Perkins  as  its  chief  lyrists." 
Do  you  know  them  all?  Why  not?  "In  Ten 
nessee  Mr.  Withers  and  Mr.  B.  F.  Boole  are  writ 
ing  creditable  verse."  To  skip  Withers  and 
Boole  is  to  cut  out  the  very  heart  of  culture. 
Then  there  is  Mr.  Bowles  of  Arkansas,  who  is 
doing  wonders  for  that  state.  Bowles  of  Arkan 
sas  has  "a  polish  that  suggests  some  subtle  con 
nection  between  cypress  groves  and  the  classics." 
Professor  Slope  is  doing  even  more  for  North 
Carolina,  where  he  is  not  only  "publishing  credit 
able  poetry,"  but  spreading  fiction.  And  "pass 
ing  softly  over  South  Carolina  (very  softly,  for 
fear  of  waking  up  J.  Gordon  Coogler  of  Colum 
bia)  we  find  Georgia  illuminated  by  the  talent  of 
Mr.  Hodges  and  Mr.  Norris."  Some  of  them 
8 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

you  will  know,  of  course.  It  is  not  likely,  for 
instance,  that  Professor  Slope's  work  in  North 
Carolina  has  been  unnoticed,  or  that  you  are 
wholly  ignorant  of  what  Miss  Beatrice  Sim 
mons  is  doing  in  Alabama.  But  did  you  know 
that  Texas  had  its  Bagby? 

If  the  list  were  exhaustive  one  would  not  feel 
so  much  abashed  at  his  ignorance  of  a  part  of  it, 
but  these  are  only  a  few  of  the  very  greatest 
names,  and  with  these  the  writer  feels  it  safe  to 
assume  that  every  educated  person  is  familiar. 
He  has  a  hundred  others  in  reserve.  A  short 
time  before  this  article  was  printed,  a  professor 
of  literature  had  counted  up  contemporary  Amer 
ican  novelists,  including  only  those  whose  work 
had  real  significance  and  was  sure  to  live  forever. 
There  were  sixty-six  of  them.  In  no  other  class 
of  men  do  you  find  such  indomitable  energy  as  in 
these  writers  on  American  literature.  It  is  a  life 
of  heroic  sacrifice  and  incessant  toil,  for  no  man 
could  possibly  be  so  thorough  in  this  field  unless 
he  confined  himself  strictly  to  it  and  labored  day 
and  night.  With  sixty-six  American  novelists 

9 


ON   LITERARY   COMPULSION 

to  be  conscientiously  studied  and  appraised,  he 
cannot  fritter  away  his  time  with  the  classics,  and 
if  he  turns  his  attention  for  one  instant  to  what 
is  going  on  abroad  he  is  bound  to  skip  some  one 
in  Nebraska  or  Oregon.  For  say  what  you  will, 
a  man's  reading  power  is  limited,  and  thorough 
ness  nowadays  is  to  be  had  only  by  concentration. 
I  do  not  deny  that  a  man  may  read  occasionally 
in  Shelley  or  Heine  or  Browning  and  at  the  same 
time  keep  his  eye  on  Bowles  of  Arkansas  and 
Slope  of  North  Carolina.  But  I  do  argue  that 
it  is  a  dangerous  business  to  divide  his  time  in 
this  way  if  he  aims  at  thoroughness.  For  it  is 
not  as  if  there  were  merely  Slopes  and  Bowleses. 
There  are  Lanes,  Booles,  Witherses  and  Bagbys 
by  the  dozen,  and  the  mind  that  shall  grasp  all 
these  and  retain  them  permanently  must  not  be 
distracted. 

In  regard  to  "creditable  verse"  I  go  even  fur 
ther.  It  is  safer  in  this  field  to  specialize  by 
states.  No  one  should  try  and  keep  track  of  the 
"creditable  verse"  in  the  whole  country.  Unless 
he  has  a  very  remarkable  mind  he  will  surely  be 
10 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

superficial  and  very  likely  unjust.  There  are 
no  statistics  of  "creditable  verse,"  but  from  com 
mon  observation  I  know  there  is  not  a  state  in  the 
Union  that  does  not  raise  enough  of  it  to  take 
all  one  man's  time  measuring  it  off  and  ticketing 
it.  And  any  one  who  sets  himself  the  task  of 
reading  all  of  it  has  no  right  to  expect  any  time 
to  spare  for  verse  that  is  more  than  creditable. 
That  is  the  puzzling  thing  about  these  articles  on 
contemporary  writers.  They  present  problems 
of  specialization  in  their  most  baffling  form. 
Those  robust  and  even-tempered  people  seem  not 
to  be  aware  of  them.  Signs  of  increasing  liter 
ary  activity  fill  them  with  the  most  amazing 
cheerfulness.  There  is  a  poet  out  in  Arizona 
now,  they  will  say,  and  he  is  turning  out  reason 
ably  good  verse  quite  rapidly.  They  speak  of 
him  as  if  he  were  a  new  water-works.  To  our 
weaker  or  more  indolent  minds  that  discovery 
would  be  an  embarrassment.  It  is  tantalizing 
to  hear  of  another  fairly  good  poet.  What  is 
to  be  done  with  him?  There  are  very  few  of  us 
who  have  finished  with  the  other  kind  of  poets. 
11 


ON   LITERARY   COMPULSION 

You  must  cut  somewhere,  for  life  is  short.  In 
the  long  run  the  choice  will  narrow  down  to  this 
alternative:  Either  you  will  seek  culture  by  a 
course  of  reading  under  the  direction  of  these 
writers  and  give  up  your  life  to  it ;  or  you  will 
grow  so  callous  that  the  setting  up  of  a  new  and 
serviceable  poet  in  a  western  town  will  excite 
you  no  more  than  the  opening  of  a  new  cigar 
shop. 


DN  LITERARY   COMPULSION 
III 

LITERARY    BURROWING 

THE  Iliad  is  a  great  symbolical  poem,  accord 
ing  to  a  certain  critic,  because  Homer  makes  a 
group  of  old  men,  on  seeing  Helen  pass  by,  re 
mark  :  "After  all,  she  was  worth  it,"  or  words  to 
that  effect*  This,  according  to  our  commenta 
tor,  proves  that  the  Iliad  contains  a  great  moral 
idea;  in  other  words,  is  symbolical.  Now, 
Homer  was  the  most  utterly  unsymbolical  person 
(if  he  was  a  person)  that  ever  enjoyed  good 
health.  He  never  had  anything  of  that  kind  the 
matter  with  him,  and  his  poems  aTe  as  free  from 
it  as  they  are  from  germs.  The  way  our  sophis 
ticated  modern  critic  will  read  complex  innuen 
does  into  what  is  elemental  is  enough  to  wear 
one's  patience  to  the  bone.  Must  poor  old 
Homer  father  a  lot  of  esoteric  things?  Is  the 
Iliad  to  have  four  or  five  layers  of  meaning,  one 
below  the  other,  like  a  pile  of  sandwiches?  This 
digging  up  of  unsuspected  meanings  goes  too 
far.  It  spoils  a  poem  to  be  all  the  time  spading 
IB 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

it  or  boring  through  its  imagery  with  a  steam 
drill.  These  critics  spend  too  much  of  their  time 
underground,  and  they  look  pale  and  unwhole 
some  when  they  come  up.  And  it  often  happens 
that  what  they  bring  up  is  something  they  have 
dropped  themselves.  There  are  commentators 
who  have  been  digging  all  their  lives  and  come 
up  with  their  own  pocket  handkerchief.  They 
expect  you  to  be  glad  about  it.  They  think  a 
poet,  like  a  dog,  no  sooner  happens  on  a  good 
thing  than  he  wants  to  bury  it. 

A  few  years  ago  an  inmate  of  one  of  our  state 
asylums  was  taken  out  for  a  walk  in  a  pleasant 
park.  As  soon  as  his  keeper's  back  was  turned 
he  jumped  down  a  manhole  and  ran  along  a  sewer 
main.  When  dug  up  at  great  expense  he  com 
plained  of  the  interference,  saying  he  was  "keep 
ing  store"  down  there.  So  of  a  symbolist  when 
you  let  him  into  a  poem.  One  would  think 
Homer  might  have  escaped  this.  The  meaning 
of  the  Iliad  is  so  accessible  it  seems  foolish  to 
try  and  enter  it  through  a  gopher  hole.  But  if 
we  must,  we  must.  Helen  is  divine  beauty; 
14 


ON   LITERARY    COMPULSION 

Menelaus  is  the  soul;  Paris  the  heart  of  human 
ity;  Nestor  the  onlooking,  judging  thought; 
Thersites  the  ego,  and  Achilles  the  personification 
of  world  energy.  And  whenever  one  of  them 
does  anything  it  means  six  or  eight  other  things, 
and  they  never  can  take  a  step  without  leaving  a 
footnote.  Then  it  will  amount  to  something  to 
say  you  understand  Homer.  It  will  rank  you 
among  the  seven  deepest  thinkers  in  the  world, 
and  even  in  regard  to  the  other  six  you  may  rea 
sonably  entertain  suspicions. 

That  is  really  the  ambitious  motive  at  the  root 
of  this  kind  of  criticism.  Below  every  great 
poem  there  is  a  little  subterranean  aristocracy 
where  rank  is  measured  by  its  distance  from  the 
surface.  Each  is  aiming  at  the  point  furthest 
down.  A  few  years  ago  a  Shakespearian  critic 
showed  that  when  Falstaff  was  made  to  babble  of 
green  fields  he  was  really  quoting  from  one  of  the 
psalms.  This  proved  that  he  had  received  a  re 
ligious  education,  and  was  probably  a  choir  boy 
in  his  youth.  The  man  who  hit  upon  this  illumi 
nating  thought  was  for  weeks  a  marvel  among 
15 


ON   LITERARY    COMPULSION 

critics.  Since  then  they  have  no  doubt  found 
Falstaff  to  be  nine  different  kinds  of  an  allegory  ; 
so  rapidly  does  the  work  advance.  Why  need 
every  honest  poet  be  suspected  of  leading  a  quad 
ruple  life  ?  Sometimes  the  second  or  third  mean 
ing  is  less  interesting  than  the  first,  and  the  only 
really  difficult  thing  about  a  poem  is  the  critic's 
explanation  of  it.  But  active  minds  must  find 
employment,  and  if  you  cannot  burrow  how  can 
you  be  deep?  And  if  you  are  not  deep  you  are 
that  wretched,  vulgar  thing,  a  casual  reader,  and 
will  be  snubbed  to  the  end  of  your  days  by  these 
haughty  troglodytes.  So  when  one  of  them 
comes  along,  never  let  him  see  you  feeding  on  the 
surface  of  a  poem.  Dive  to  the  bottom  like  a 
loon.  You  can  bring  up  queer  things  from  be 
low  as  well  as  he.  Swear  you  got  them  from  the 
deepest  part.  Then  he  will  feel  degraded  and 
superficial  and  blush  awkwardly  like  a  casual 
reader. 


16 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

IV 

THE   DIFFIDENCE    OF    PRINT 

THE  moralists  who  are  forever  discussing  the 
behaviour  of  newspapers  pay  no  attention  to  the 
reader's  main  complaint.  You  might  think  from 
the  criticism  of  newspapers  that  it  was  all  a  mat 
ter  of  tall  headlines,  slander  and  sensation.  Start 
a  reform  movement,  and  that  is  the  sort  of  thing 
it  aims  at.  But  why  not  own  up?  Our  main 
grudge  is  against  the  most  respectable.  What 
if  the  people  you  met  talked  like  a  newspaper — 
never  made  an  admission  or  saw  but  one  side, 
never  retracted  except  on  compulsion  or  paused 
in  the  praise  of  themselves  ?  Suppose  their  cause 
is  a  good  one,  do  you  like  them  for  licking  its 
boots  ?  Consider  that  awful  thing  they  call  "the 
policy."  There  is  nothing  more  amazing  to  the 
reader  than  the  way  a  mind  can  be  wrapped  in  a 
"policy."  Many  a  decorous  newspaper  is  edited 
by  a  moral  papoose.  In  private  life  "the  policy" 
would  make  you  talk  in  epitaphs  of  last  year's 
opinions,  hook  your  fancy  to  a  foregone  conclu- 

17 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

sion,  turn  your  mind  into  a  bare  card  catalogue 
of  the  things  you  used  to  think.  But  being  a 
man  and  not  a  newspaper,  you  can  blame  a  work- 
ingman  to-day  and  a  capitalist  to-morrow.  Rules 
are  good,  but  an  exception  is  no  sacrilege,  and 
there  is  no  fact  on  earth  that  a  grown  man  need 
hide  from  and  no  cause  in  Heaven  that  is  worth 
his  cheating  for. 

So  it  might  be  with  newspapers,  but  they 
seem  by  nature  secretive.  Are  you  for  Our 
President?  Behold,  we  are  at  his  feet.  Are 
you  against  him,  kind  reader?  Here,  then, 
are  ten  more  Philippine  atrocities  of  which 
nine  rest  on  no  evidence,  but  we  count  them  in  for 
the  good  of  the  cause.  Do  the  facts  seem  against 
us  this  morning?  Then  here  goes  for  "Rug- 
weaving  in  Armenia,"  or,  "Does  a  College  Educa 
tion  Pay?"  We  trust  it  will  not  be  suspected 
that  we  are  dodging  the  point.  Here  is  the  for 
lorn  little  editor,  so  afraid  of  things  as  they  are 
that  he  is  doomed  for  months  to  total  irrelevancy ; 
and  there  is  the  praiser  of  corporations  who  dares 
not  stop ;  and  this  is  Mr.  Pecksniff's  paper  with 
18 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

the  luxuriant  moral  and  the  little  meannesses  that 
destroy  the  vines.  The  types  are  familiar  in 
every  large  city.  Where  are  the  people  who  like 
them?  Yet  they  are  clean  and  respectable,  and, 
like  most  of  our  pet  aversions,  are  safely  within 
the  law.  Criticism  in  private  takes  these  lines. 
Public  criticism — the  kind  that  comes  from  the 
pulpit  or  is  engrossed  in  resolutions — aims  only 
at  what  is  gross  and  palpable.  It  blames  the 
license  of  the  press,  when  our  main  grievance  is 
its  strange  constraints  and  silences.  In  spite  of 
the  great  improvement  in  the  news  columns,  the 
comment  that  gives  personal  character  has  in  the 
past  fifteen  years  grown  so  feeble  that  many  talk 
of  giving  it  up  altogether  and  leaving  us  alone 
with  the  reporters. 

It  is  a  loss  to  American  letters.  No  matter 
how  well  news  is  gathered  or  how  accurately  told, 
the  time  will  never  come  when  we  are  content  with 
bare  narration.  Those  frank  and  inspiriting  little 
newspaper  essays  were  about  the  best  things 
Americans  ever  did  with  their  pen,  but  what  with 
the  death  of  some  men  and  the  deliquescence  of 

19 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

others,  they  are  now  on  the  level  with  our  books. 
It  is  not  a  matter  of  premises  or  principles  or 
morals  in  the  conventional  degree.  We  are 
friendly  and  inquisitive  little  animals,  and  the 
man  is  the  main  thing,  after  all,  and  there  is 
never  a  moment  when  we  would  not  rather  meet 
a  real  one  than  look  at  a  panorama  of  world 
politics  or  see  a  gas-tank  explode.  The  newest 
thing  in  the  world  is  a  new  way  of  looking  at  an 
old  one,  and  the  greatest  thing  that  ever  hap 
pened  is  what  somebody  happened  to  think. 
People  read  newspapers  more  for  company  than 
for  guidance;  and  their  criticism  is  nine-tenths 
epicurean.  Virtue  is  safe,  but  the  mind  feels 
lonesome  in  most  things  that  we  read.  A  re 
former  never  seems  to  miss  anything  not  men 
tioned  in  a  moral  code,  but  it  is  not  so  with  the 
rest  of  us. 

Here  we  read:  "Another  saddening  proof 
of  the  havoc  the  war  spirit  has  wrought 
among  us  is  afforded  by  the  shocking  scandals  in 
the  Jonesville  post-office.  'War  is  hell,'  says 
Burke.  It  was  indeed  to  be  expected  that  the 
SO 


ON   LITERARY   COMPULSION 

poison  would  spread  from  the  heart  to  the  mem 
bers.  The  government  that  sanctions  a  selfish 
and  unholy  war  cannot  avoid  the  logical  conse 
quences,  and  from  rapine  and  torture  in  the 
Philippines  it  is  an  easy  step  to  knavery  at  home. 
'Corrupt  the  morality  at  the  centre,'  said  Mil 
ton,  'and  the  devil  will  ramp  on  the  perimeter.' 
The  return  of  the  proconsul  laden  with  booty 
affords  his  fellow-citizen  no  safer  example  than 
he  did  in  the  days  of  Tacitus,  and  the  warning 
that  Sallust  sounded  to  the  venal  city  soon  to 
perish  (mature  perituram)  might  well  have  been 
meant  for  us."  Academic  and  in  a  sense  con 
scientious,  but  where  is  the  man  on  the  premises? 
Or  again,  let  the  poor  old  Job  of  a  public  hearken 
unto  the  son  of  Barachel  the  Buzite :  "Once  more 
with  characteristic  vigor  and  common  sense  Presi 
dent  Roosevelt  has  utterly  confounded  the  as 
sailants  of  the  Administration  and  vindicated  the 
honor  of  the  nation.  Not  a  shred  remains  of 
the  charges  against  the  army  or  the  government. 
No  one  can  now  doubt  that  the  headquarters  of 
the  Philippine  revolt  were  in  Boston,  and  fresh 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

reports  from  Manila  daily  confirm  the  belief  that 
but  for  treachery  in  this  country  the  insurrection 
would  not  have  lasted  a  day.  President  Roose 
velt  is  not  the  man  to  shirk  responsibility.  As 
he  said  in  his  address  to  the  Yale  students,  'What 
this  country  needs  is  men  that  can  bite.'  Wise, 
statesmanlike  and  courageous,  he  has  the  people 
with  him.  'Breathe  hard,'  said  he  at  the  Seattle 
Young  Ladies'  Seminary,  waving  a  Rough  Rider 
flag,  'play  hard,  rest  hard,  work  hard;  up  and 
at  it,  no  matter  what  it  is.'  Nothing  could  bet 
ter  express  his  own  spirit  and  that  of  the  Amer 
ican  people."  This  is  the  way  men  divide  in 
print,  but  there  is  nothing  like  it  in  nature.  No 
body's  private  opinions  ever  take  this  form.  It 
is  the  monochrome  of  party  and  the  stage  neces 
sity  of  debate,  the  twang  of  the  pen  and  the 
hypocrisy  of  the  ink-bottle  which  make  the  differ 
ence  between  men  and  editors.  It  is  not  an  affair 
of  the  heart. 

Men  are  never  so  prim  and  starchy,  so  deeply 
dyed  and  terribly  committed  in  real  life.     Many 
an  honest  fellow-being,  full  of  earnest  whims  and 
22 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

pleasing  foibles,  variegated,  complex,  alive  and 
charming,  goes  down  into  print  as  into  a  sar 
cophagus,  and  when  you  mourn  his  loss  thinks  you 
are  trifling  with  the  sound  moral  sentiment  en 
graved  on  the  tomb.  Perhaps  it  comes  from 
hearing  so  much  about  bringing  things  "to  the 
bar  of  public  opinion"  and  all  that.  Perhaps 
it  is  due  to  an  embarrassed  sense  of  the 
presence  of  Tom,  Dick  and  Harry.  Lowell's 
theory  of  it  was  that  the  soul  had  done 
something  in  a  pre-existent  state  it  was  now 
ashamed  of.  But  the  basis  of  criticism  is  nega 
tive — not  the  sins  committed  but  the  pleasures 
withheld — and  the  pleasure  of  being  talked  to  as 
an  equal  is  the  main  thing  the  readers  miss. 
Suppose  somebody  does  misunderstand,  or  a  few 
fat  gentlemen  fall  by  the  wayside  or  a  spinster 
or  two  is  frightened  away,  is  the  thing  so  grave  ? 
Must  one  feel  as  pompous  as  Cicero?  Will  his 
country  come  to  him  in  a  dream  and  say,  "Mar 
cus  Tullius,  what  are  you  doing?"  Let  the  great 
mind  go  crashing  forth;  the  casualties  will  be 
surprisingly  small.  That  is  the  proper  advice 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

to  give  to  any  American  writer.  The  question 
before  the  man  is  what  to  do  in  his  neutral  in 
tervals,  in  the  holidays  of  his  virtues  and  the 
pauses  of  his  sin,  for  there  are  days  and  days 
when  the  moral  character  needs  nothing  done  to 
it  and  the  politics  are  all  in  place,  when  life  may 
be  merely  lived  and  the  country  merely  looked  at, 
— a  time  of  secular  cravings,  a  permissibly 
mundane  time,  the  days  of  the  devil's  siesta,  the 
reformer's  Saturday  nights.  But  an  editor  sel 
dom  knows  such  intervals,  for  human  nature  is 
a  different  thing  from  print.  Pen  in  hand,  he 
believes  we  do  all  our  thinking  in  majorities,  en 
joy  by  popular  consent,  make  friends  on  prin 
ciple, — doubts  if  there  is  even  the  larva 'of  an 
imagination  or  a  latent  power  of  pleasant  dreams, 
or  a  tender  side  toward  any  mental  temptation  in 
this  exceedingly  business-like  land. 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 


THE    WRITER    WHO    DOES    NOT    CARE 

THERE  is  no  sign  in  Kipling's  writings  that  he 
has  ever  learned  anything  from  his  critics  or 
made  any  concessions  to  his  public's  demands. 
Take  it  or  leave  it,  has  been  his  attitude  from  the 
first.  In  his  own  good  time,  after  people  had  de 
spaired  of  him,  he  wrote  Kim.  We  then  told 
him  distinctly  that  was  the  kind  of  thing  we 
wanted  of  him,  and  asked  him  to  do  it  again ; 
whereupon  he  undertook  the  conduct  of  the  Brit 
ish  Government  through  the  agency  of  bad  verse. 
The  Islanders  may  be  true  and  statesmanlike, 
and  rifle  clubs  may  be  founded  on  the  strength 
of  it,  and  cricketers  may  hang  their  heads  for 
shame.  Some  say  poetry  is  as  poetry  does ;  but 
not  if  it  save  the  British  Empire  shall  we  ever 
admit  the  goodness  of  this  poem  or  that  it  is  a 
poem  at  all.  It  will  be  classed  in  the  long  run 
with  Kipling's  rhymed  journalism,  effective  but 
transitory,  a  matter  of  a  few  fiery  phrases,  much 
overstraining  and  many  flat  lines.  As  mere 
25 


ON   LITERARY    COMPULSION 

literary  pleasure-lovers,  his  readers  have  a  right 
to  complain.  Bother  his  prophecies  and  devil 
take  his  reforms  and  all  those  ballads  with  a  pur 
pose,  and  letters  on  South  Africa,  and  allegories 
on  steam  engines,  and  monodies  on  quartermas 
ter's  supplies.  That  is  the  way  they  feel 
about  it,  blaming  not  so  much  the  subjects 
as  Kipling's  way  with  them.  Critics  who 
praise  Kipling's  faculty  of  throwing  himself 
into  a  subject  forget  that  one  unfortunate 
result  has  been  his  total  disappearance  in  it. 
He  paints  himself  in  with  his  local  color.  It 
has  happened  again  and  again.  A  man 
among  men,  but  also  a  piston-rod  among  pis 
ton-rods.  Other  writers  have  at  one  time  or 
another  paid  some  attention  to  criticism.  There 
was  George  Meredith,  for  instance,  whom  no  one 
would  accuse  of  pliancy.  He  was  swerved  en 
tirely  from  his  early  course  by  adverse  criticism. 
And  Thomas  Hardy,  the  only  other  living  novel 
ist  of  Kipling's  rank,  was  influenced  by  it  to  his 
own  and  our  advantage.  But  from  Kipling,  as 
from  a  Tammany  water  main,  we  must  take 
26 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

things  as  they  come,  knowing  that  protests  are  in 
vain. 

He  will  not  repent,  or  conform,  or  edit  himself, 
or  study  how  to  please.  But  there  is  about  him  a 
sort  of  surly  sincerity  even  at  his  worst.  He 
at  least  is  interested  if  you  are  not.  He  is 
pleased  with  each  sudden  new  intimacy  and  ex- 
asperatingly  glib  in  its  jargon  and  would  as  lief 
lose  readers  as  not.  Bridge-building  or  what 
ever  it  may  be — down  he  goes  in  it  with  a  horrid 
splash  of  terminology  and  remains  defiantly  unin 
teresting  for  months  at  a  time.  It  is  not  as  if  he 
tried  to  please  and  failed.  It  is  his  mood,  not 
yours.  He  is  merely  muttering  to  himself  the 
technicalities  of  his  hobby,  and  criticism  cannot 
shake  it  out  of  him.  In  the  intervals  of  some 
thing  like  genius  he  is  merely  a  pig-headed  man. 
But  the  course  has  some  advantages.  He  never 
does  what  is  expected  of  him,  but  he  sometimes 
does  more.  Whatever  his  sins  are,  they  are  not 
sins  of  subservience,  and  meanwhile  he  lives  his 
own  life.  Not  that  his  unliterary  activities  have 
any  value  in  themselves.  Beyond  stirring  up 
87 


ON   LITERARY    COMPULSION 

rows  and  coining  some  quotable  phrases,  what 
has  he  done  for  politics  these  last  few  years? 
But  looked  at  as  a  form  of  diversion,  politics 
have  done  something  for  him. 

At  all  events,  he  has  escaped  some  of  the  fatal 
consequences  of  a  literary  success.  Success  is 
usually  the  result  of  a  sharpened  sense  of  what  is 
wanted.  As  a  general  rule,  the  successful  writer, 
especially  the  successful  American  writer,  is  a 
man  who  is  disciplined  by  demand.  The  vagaries 
of  self-expression  may  do  for  a  few  privileged 
characters,  but  the  steady,  substantial  incomes 
are  for  those  who  do  what  is  expected  of  them. 
Taking  it  altogether,  it  is  the  line  of  least  resist 
ance,  the  happy  level  and  the  golden  average, 
and  the  best  rule  for  the  greatest  number,  and  the 
only  safe  course  a  priori  if  you  have  a  family  to 
support.  Not  that  they  say  one  thing  when  they 
particularly  want  to  say  another.  There  is  no 
deliberate  heterophemy  about  it.  But  people  who 
get  on  in  the  world  have  developed  a  sort  of 
market  nerve  and  can  feel  it  throbbing  in  the 
back  of  the  brain.  Of  many  thoughts  it  auto- 
28 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

matically  thrusts  forward  the  one  that  is  most 
presentable,  and  by  an  instinctive  arithmetic 
counts  votes  on  every  sentence  before  it  is  written 
down.  This  is  the  general  law  of  successful  liter 
ary  composition,  though  not  so  stated  in  the 
books.  The  uniformity  of  American  fiction, 
about  which  so  many  lose  their  temper,  merely 
shows  that  our  writers  have  never  felt  like  risking 
much  for  self-expression,  and  there  is  no  good 
reason  why  they  should.  Sic  vos  non  vobis  is 
the  motto  of  all  efficient  public  entertainers.  If 
they  had  any  big  peculiar  ideas,  they  would  prob 
ably  let  us  have  a  peep  at  them.  Nothing  very 
great  is  being  hidden,  we  believe.  Yet  every 
little  while  a  critic  attacks  them  on  the  ground 
that  they  ought  to  do  better,  and  that  the  best 
selling  books  are  not  literature.  Aim  higher  and 
sell  less,  he  says.  It  is  the  theory  of  concealed 
genius.  Kipling's  contemptuous  non-conform 
ity  would  carry  most  men  straight  to  the 
poor-house.  Nor  does  it  follow  that  posterity 
will  like  any  better  the  things  that  the 
present  rejects.  The  ferocious  onslaughts  on 
29 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

recent  American  novels  are  both  illogical  and 
unfair. 

Still,  people  have  their  harmless  little  peculiar 
ities,  and  it  has  often  been  noted  by  observers  that 
American  writers  of  fiction  are  not  nearly  so  much 
alike  as  their  books.  Natural  diversities  linger 
though  tucked  out  of  sight  by  the  pen.  But  it 
has  happened  often  that  once  in  the  public  favor 
they  are  never  quite  the  same  men  again.  Suc 
cess,  like  a  flat-iron,  smoothes  out  the  little  ir 
regularities  that  might  just  as  well  have  been 
left  in,  and  there  are  whimsicalities  about  the 
people  that  we  are  apt  to  miss  in  their  books. 
Caution  and  self -repression  to  the  extent  of  hold 
ing  back  certain  matters  that  might  with  perfect 
safety  be  let  go  certainly  do  seem  a  little  over 
developed  in  our  writers.  What  with  wondering 
whether  the  editor  will  like  it,  and  whether 
the  public  will  take  to  it,  and  whether  the 
critics  will  see  through  it,  there  is  little  chance 
for  merely  personal  preferences  of  their  own. 
And  by  the  time  the  habit  of  pleasing  everybody 
is  formed,  the  soul  has  caught  a  color  that  will 
30 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

not  come  out  in  the  wash.  Our  current  literature 
is  a  literature  of  suppressed  inclinations,  some 
times  to  our  loss.  The  saddest  thing  about 
our  young  authors  is  the  exchange  of  pos 
sibilities  for  dead  certainties  after  they  have 
struck  their  pace.  With  Kipling,  politics  serve 
the  purpose  of  a  rotation  of  crops.  But  here,  if 
a  writer  is  silent  after  his  third  romantic  novel, 
we  always  know  he  is  working  like  a  beaver  on 
his  fourth.  Something  to  do  during  the  unin 
spired  intervals  is  the  great  need  of  the  calling. 
Even  Shakespeare's  nature  felt  the  want  of  it — 
"subdued  to  what  it  works  in,"  as  he  says.  Kip 
ling  goes  in  for  prophecy  and  empire-building 
as  a  horse  goes  to  pasture,  and  comes  back 
greatly  refreshed.  If  it  had  not  been  for  the 
intervening  years  of  foolishness  he  might  never 
have  given  us  Kim.  That  is  a  cheering  thought 
that  ought  to  come  to  any  one  who  reads  The 
Islanders  and  wonders  why  such  things  need  be. 
Years  ago  he  gave  fair  warning  he  would  not 
work  with  an  eye  to  his  public,  and  he  never  has. 
Not  caring  at  all  how  we  liked  it,  he  has  blundered 
31 


ON   LITERARY   COMPULSION 

into  many  things — sometimes  a  tinker,  sometimes 
a  counsellor  of  nations,  always  certain  beyond 
human  certainty,  and  almost  always  wrong.  But 
rested  by  his  many  irrelevances  and  exhilarated 
years  of  impudence,  he  comes  back  to  his  work 
finally,  like  Kim  from  his  illicit  wanderings,  and 
does  it  better  than  before. 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

VI 
THE  LITERARY  TEMPERAMENT 

THE  young  heio  of  Mr.  Howell's  Letters  Home 
is  so  literary  that  he  can  dine  gloriously  at  a 
fifty-cent  table  d'hote,  where  on  Fridays  he  mis 
takes  clam  chowder  for  bouillabaisse  and  feels 
like  Thackeray  when  he  is  eating  it.  Every  one 
he  meets  is  a  "type"  and  every  emotion  is  "ma 
terial."  When  consumed  by  passion  he  is  not  too 
preoccupied  to  note  how  that  passion  would  look 
in  print,  and  when  attacked  by  the  influenza  he 
turns  his  delirium  into  "copy"  that  no  magazine 
would  refuse.  He  is  not  especially  gifted.  He 
has  the  temperament  without  the  gifts.  A 
genius  writes  in  the  overflow  of  life  and  seems 
to  forget  he  is  writing,  but  our  hero  could  never 
do  that.  With  him  the  phrase  must  always  come 
first ;  his  mind  is  book-bitten  and  he  is  doomed  to 
edit  his  life  in  advance.  Hence  he  never  will 
altogether  live.  People  of  the  literary  tempera 
ment  seldom  do  quite  live.  They  are  impeded  by 
a  too  persistent  pen-consciousness  which  is  the 
33 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

spiritual  form  of  writer's  cramp,  and  while  others 
may  merely  feel,  they  must  be  making  phrases  as 
well  as  feeling.  So  by  dividing  the  mind  they 
lower  the  pulse,  and  they  are  always  a  little  below 
their  vital  capacity.  If  it  is  a  love  affair,  a  part 
of  the  creature  is  taking  notes  and  down  goes  his 
temperature ;  if  it  is  an  agony  he  must  see  to  it 
that  it  bring  forth  fruit  meet  for  publication. 
"I  was  as  miserable,"  says  this  Wallace  Ardith  in 
Letters  Home,  "as  a  guilty  wretch  can  be  and 
be  conscious  of  his  innocence,  but  my  confounded 
mind  kept  taking  notes  of  the  situation  and  in  a 
hideous  way  rejoicing  in  it  as  material."  Mr. 
Howells  meant  him  for  a  young  man,  but  he 
might  be  as  old  as  Mr.  Howells  himself.  He 
comes  from  a  town  in  Iowa,  but  he  might  as  well 
have  been  born  in  Thrums.  The  essential  thing 
is  his  ingrained  literosity. 

We  should  have  liked  to  see  him  hanged  in  the 
end  like  Sentimental  Tommy,  but  Mr.  Howells 
seemed  rather  fond  of  him.  He  showed  the  clem 
ency  of  introspection.  Few  authors  wish  to 
hang  their  Sentimental  Tommies  after  confess- 
14 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

ing  them.  Mr.  Barrie  is  the  only  Brutus  among 
novelists,  and  you  cannot  read  that  book  of  his 
without  hearing  his  self-love  groan  aloud.  To 
the  unliterary  reader  Tommy  is  merely  a  vain 
young  man,  who  might  even  be  a  hero  if  the 
author  would  let  him  alone,  but  whenever  he  is 
most  heroic  Mr.  Barrie  is  most  incredulous.  It 
was  a  grand  deed,  to  be  sure,  he  will  say,  but 
Tommy  would  never  have  done  it  if  there 
had  been  no  women  around;  and  had  there  been 
no  public,  there  would  have  been  no  Tommy  at 
all,  for  he  could  do  nothing  for  its  own  sake — not 
even  draw  a  natural  breath — but  only  for  the 
sake  of  having  it  known  that  Tommy  did  it. 
Straightforward  inartistic  folk  cannot  make 
out  what  all  this  sarcasm  is  about,  but  the  liter 
ary  temperament  blushes  up  to  the  roots  of  its 
hair  when  it  reads  it.  The  book  was  never  ade 
quately  reviewed.  It  was  too  brutally  intimate 
and  indelicately  true,  too  terribly  authorish  for 
any  other  author  to  deal  with  frankly  and  retain 
his  self-esteem,  and  for  any  one  not  an  author  or 
an  observer  of  authors  to  understand.  Tommy 
35 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

is  practically  thrown  away  on  any  reader  who 
has  not  at  least  a  literary  temperament  in  the 
family. 

The  trouble  with  Tommy  was  simply  that  he 
had  no  private  life.  Every  motive  was  forked 
like  the  devil's  tail  and  he  did  nothing  without 
reference  to  a  bystander.  The  eternal  bystander 
is  the  peculiar  gift  of  the  literary  temperament. 
Stevenson's  fancy  would  have  peopled  a  desert 
isle,  not  that  he  might  look  at  them  but  that  they 
might  see  Stevenson.  Alone  under  the  sky 
the  literary  temperament  still  hopes  it  may 
be  discovered,  and  fancies  itself  discovered 
when  it  has  given  up  hope.  In  the  fifth 
century  A.D.  Tommy  would  have  been  a 
pillar  saint  and  stood  on  one  leg  and  let  the 
other  rot  off,  not  at  all  in  the  fear  of  the  Lord, 
but  in  the  sense  of  the  crowd  below  and  the  high 
hope  that  some  day  there  would  be  a  Saint 
Thomas  of  Thrums.  If  there  had  been  no  crowd 
below,  Tommy  would  have  invented  one. 

The  loss  of  the  private  life  is  the  chief  danger 
of  the  literary  temperament.  Even  Shakespeare 
86 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

feared  it  when  he  wrote  that  his  nature  was  sub 
dued  to  what  it  worked  in  like  the  dyer's  hand. 
"The  world  is  too  much  with  us,"  said  Words 
worth  suddenly  aware  that  the  public  had  grown 
into  him  and  that  his  soul  had  no  songs  without 
words  and  that  the  primrose  on  the  river's  brim 
a  four-line  stanza  was  to  him  and  nothing  more. 
Had  it  not  been  for  that  he  would  have  had 
glimpses,  standing  on  that  pleasant  lea,  that 
would  have  made  him  less  forlorn.  But  writers 
of  this  class  are  in  no  real  danger.  The  risk  is 
run  on  the  lower  plane,  where  life,  like  a  maga 
zine  poem,  is  written  before  it  is  felt  and 
thoughts  are  tried  on  like  hats  to  see  if  they  are 
becoming  and  the  land  is  only  local  color  and  the 
sea  is  made  of  ink.  That  is  where  the  Tommies 
are,  among  the  best-selling  heroes  of  the  week. 
the  impersonal  ghosts  of  current  literature,  each 
trying  to  pick  out  a  soul  that  the  reading  public 
would  like  the  look  of. 

"Now  you're  looking  holy  again,"  said    the 
exasperated  Aaron  when  Tommy  was  planning 
some  conspicuous  nobility  and  resolving  in  his 
37 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

mind  to  look  the  part  and  seeing  it  all  in  type 
and  hearing  the  reader's  comments  on  it.  The 
private  life  of  the  two  Carlyles  must  have  been 
full  of  these  little  calamities,  and  it  certainly 
was  not  genius  that  made  the  pair  so  uncomfort 
able.  We  all  love  the  illusion  of  spontaneity 
and  like  to  believe  that  the  poet's  eye  doth 
actually  glance  from  Heaven  to  earth  instead  of 
glancing  sidewise  at  the  onlooker.  It  is  not 
pleasant  to  ascertain  that  Poe's  Raven  would 
not  have  been  written  if  he  had  not  happened  to 
observe  that  "Nevermore"  would  make  a  musical 
refrain  and  "Lenore"  rhymed  with  it  and  that  he 
brought  in  the  raven  only  because  nothing  but  a 
raven  would  be  at  all  likely  to  ejaculate  "never 
more"  at  regular  intervals,  except  possibly  a 
parrot,  and  a  parrot  would  not  rhyme  with  Le 
nore.  Poe's  description  of  his  processes  set 
many  minor  poets  working  wrong-end-to.  Nor 
do  we  like  to  read  how  Burke  generously  tinkered 
poor  Crabbe's  poem  and  Johnson  lent  his  heavy 
hand  and  Crabbe  accepted  everything  as  more 
likely  to  beguile  the  public,  forgetting  by  that 
38 


ON    LITERARY    COMPULSION 

time  that  he  had  started  out  with  anything  of 
his  own.  But  while  the  most  gifted  sometimes 
sink  to  it,  the  merely  clever  never  rise  above  it, 
and  they  leave  you  wondering  whether  there  is 
anything  in  them  that  the  public  did  not  put 
there.  That  is  why  Miss  Emily  Dickinson  ex 
claimed  that  she  liked  a  look  of  agony  because 
she  knew  it  was  real  and  why  Kingsley  advised 
everybody  to  be  only  good  and  "let  who  will  be 
clever,"  and  why  Hotspur  called  poetry  the 
"forced  gait  of  a  shuffling  nag"  and  why  some 
times  after  a  brilliant  literary  meeting  where 
authors  read  their  papers  our  heart  goes  out  to 
the  simple  and  spontaneous,  natural  and  single- 
minded  cow  who  never  flourishes  her  tail  for  our 
sakes,  but  to  remove  from  her  actual  haunches  an 
authenticated  fly.  The  literary  emotions  are  so 
seldom  authenticated  in  the  secondary  ranges  of 
art. 


PART    II 

THE    CROWDED    FORUM 
I 

THE    NATIONAL    ANGLE 

PEOPLE  who  think  we  are,  as  a  nation,  no  longei 
sensitive  to  criticism,  should  have  followed  the 
comments  upon  a  certain  little  volume  of  essays 
on  American  traits  dealing  with  our  faults  of 
character  in  an  entertaining  way.  The  author 
was  a  German  who  for  several  years  had  been  a 
professor  in  one  of  our  universities.  It  is  writ 
ten,  the  author  tells  us,  "from  a  German  point  of 
view,"  though  there  was  not  the  least  need  of  his 
mentioning  it,  and  it  was  not  what  you  would  call 
a  serious  contribution  to  political  science,  but 
was,  perhaps,  the  better  reading  on  that  account. 
40 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

Like  most  of  these  comparative  race  studies,  it 
drew  its  material  mainly  from  the  writer's  pa 
triotic  heart.  He  likes  his  own  land  better,  and 
emphatically  tells  us  why,  as  if  anybody  could 
not  give  reasons  for  a  thing  like  that.  It  was 
matter  for  toasts,  poems,  flag-raisings,  and  hochs 
— a  sheer  animal  preference  for  one's  own;  yet 
critics  took  it  as  seriously  as  if  it  were  an  at 
tempt  in  pure  philosophy.  They  blamed  him 
for  not  having  a  judicial  mind;  though  why  an 
expatriated  gentleman,  terribly  homesick,  no 
doubt,  should  be  expected  to  have  one,  it  is  not 
easy  to  make  out.  Yet  they  argued  it  out  with 
him  painfully,  as  if  there  were  some  logical  proc 
ess  for  rebutting  his  German  blood.  We  are  still 
very  touchy,  and  these  comparisons  of  foreigners 
do  still  most  unaccountably  flutter  us,  and  there 
is  invariably  a  little  chorus  of  tu  quoques  and  a 
sort  of  patriotic  huff  and  a  long  ingenuous 
wrangle  over  things  no  more  debatable  than  a 
taste  in  wives  and  children.  No  visitor  can  take 
notes  on  us,  even  now,  without  starting  one  of 
these  queer  controversies,  and  (self-esteem  being 
41 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

the  most  voluble  of  the  emotions)  there  is  no 
small  amount  of  printed  matter  taken  up  with 
them  first  and  last.  Great  masses  of  mankind 
are  weighed  one  against  one  another,  as  in  the 
hand  of  Allah,  and  "these  to  Heaven  and  I  care 
not,  and  those  to  Hell  and  I  care  not ;"  and  the 
nativity  of  the  umpire  determines  which  is  which. 
German  ideals,  says  the  Professor,  without  the 
least  tremor  of  indecision,  are  higher  than  Amer 
ican  ideals ;  to  which  an  American  writer  retorts 
excitedly,  "But  you  must  admit  in  common  fair 
ness  that  American  ideals  are  broader  at  the 
base."  No  one  knows  what  they  mean  exactly,  or 
how  they  found  it  out.  But  we  all  do  know 
where  their  hearts  are — honest  folk,  perched 
each  on  his  national  angle  and  crowing  with  all 
his  might.  Not  to  say  a  word  against  the  national 
angle.  Prceter  omnes  angulus  r'idet — or  ought 
to,  whosoever  it  is.  But  why  this  solemn  show  of 
reasons  for  things  that  were  bred  in  the  bone? 

It  is  a  most  beatific  bias,  and  a  man  ought  to 
be  proud  of  it ;  and  for  my  part,  were  I  ever  to 
embark  in  such  a  controversy,  I  should  go  in 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

singing  the  battle-cry  of  freedom,  knowing  per 
fectly  well  I  could  never  be  quite  fair-minded  to 
ward  other  people's  fatherlands,  no  matter  how 
hard  I  tried.  Nor  would  I  disguise  the  fisticuffs 
of  self-vindication  under  any  show  of  compara 
tive  philosophy;  and  in  reply  to  the  man  who 
sized  up  our  country  in  a  sentence,  I  should  dis 
pose  of  Germany  in  four  scorching  words — that 
is,  if  I  did  anything  about  it  at  all,  which,  on 
second  thoughts,  is  doubtful.  There  may  be 
philosophers  who  fish  all  their  patriotism  out  of 
comparative  statistics ;  but  it  is  not  the  usual 
way,  and  most  of  our  foreign  observers  bring 
their  conclusions  with  them  as  part  of  their  racial 
physique.  So  it  was  with  the  Professor,  whose 
mind  sweeps  all  history  and  forms  of  government 
and  spans  two  continents  in  a  flash.  His  book  is 
a  series  of  lover's  comparisons,  and  we  are  the 
other  girls.  Very  telling  comparisons,  some  of 
them.  "Whenever  a  genius  is  needed,  democracy 
appoints  a  committee,"  says  he.  Ach  Gott!  the 
land  where  geniuses  are  as  common  as  committees. 
Liebt'  Heimat  land;  liebt'  Heimat  land! 
43 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

Were  the  writings  on  America  stripped  of  all 
national  prejudices  and  personal  whims,  they 
would  be  about  as  lively  as  a  school  atlas ;  and  for 
all  our  anger  at  Dickens  fifty  years  ago,  we 
know  if  he  had  written  fairly  we  should  not  have 
read  him  at  all.  A  man  cannot,  always  be  in  a 
battle  mood  about  his  country.  There  is  some 
fun  to  be  had  at  her  expense.  The  heights  of 
oratorical  tradition  are  not  for  every-day  use, 
though  we  can  climb  up  to  them  after  dinner 
when  there  is  a  big  enough  crowd.  They  are 
chiefly  for  the  people  who  have  some  vested  in 
terest  in  bombast,  and  it  often  happens  that  the 
grandest  public  tributes  are  saluted  with  private 
grins.  Foreigners  never  make  allowance  for  the 
great,  fatuous  platform-change  that  comes  over 
certain  of  our  people  whenever  they  rise  to  speak. 
"Build,  build,"  said  a  Western  Senator;  build 
and  expand  and  plant  the  flag  on  all  the  archi 
pelagoes  and  seize  all  the  canals  in  this  hemi 
sphere  and  turn  the  Pacific  Ocean  into  an  Amer 
ican  lake.  "This,"  he  concluded,  "is  not  enthu 
siasm;  it  is  geography."  Being  used  to  the 
44 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

thing,  we  know,  of  course,  it  was  neither,  but 
the  mere  chest  notes  of  a  Senator,  a  harmless, 
hyperbolical  Senator,  in  a  mood  of  the  utmost 
publicity,  in  a  pause  of  his  private  faculties,  try 
ing  his  best  to  please.  "We  must  be  cracked  up, 
sir,"  said  Mr.  Hannibal  Chollop,  "this 
country  must  be  cracked  up,"  and  Sen 
ators  still  live  in  the  Chollop  tradition. 
Nor  is  Mr.  Chollop  the  only  type  in  Martin 
Chuzzlewit  that  recent  speeches  recall.  Neither 
General  Choke  nor  the  Hon.  Lafayette  Kettle 
could  have  outdone  that  speech  in  Congress,  on 
the  occasion  of  Prince  Henry's  visit,  with 
its  reference  to  the  German  prince  as  "that  little 
Dutchman,"  and  to  the  "truckle-ency"  of  foreign 
courts.  It  was  the  very  language  of  Dickens's 
burlesque  Americans.  Foreigners  judge  us  by  it 
— all  of  us.  "We  have  heard,"  says  our  latest 
observer,  "through  the  whole  scale,  from  the  edi 
torials  of  the  yellow  press  to  the  orations  of  lead 
ing  Senators,  the  voice  of  that  aggressive  tem 
per  which  waits  for  an  opportunity  to  show 
American  superiority  to  the  world  by  battles  and 
45 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

not  by  arbitration."  He  notes  among  our  char 
acteristics  "a  bumptious  oratory,  a  flippant 
superficiality  of  style,  a  lack  of  aesthetic  refine 
ment  ...  a  constant  exploitation  on  the  part  of 
immature  young  men  with  loud  newspaper 
voices,"  and  so  forth.  And  he  bears  down  on  it 
all  with  argument,  page  after  page  of  it,  to 
prove  that  Columbia  is  not  really  the  gem  of  the 
ocean  and  the  only  land  of  the  free.  It  is  like 
rebuking  a  brass  band.  That  is  the  way  with 
foreigners.  They  are  forever  trying  to  knock 
the  wind  out  of  the  national  superlative — a  thing 
that  the  gods  could  not  do. 

Thence  come  these  absurd  discussions  with  a 
class  of  people  that  the  rest  of  us  know  better 
than  ever  to  reason  with.  Private  thinking  sel 
dom  takes  this  line.  One's  personal  friends 
neither  talk  like  editorials  nor  feel  like  Senators, 
and  one  may  travel  all  day  long  without  meeting 
the  "typical"  American  who  figures  in  the  books. 
Foreigners  do  not  realize  that  the  great  liturgy 
of  buncombe  stops  at  the  private  door,  and  that 
even  its  high  priests  are  none  too  serious  about  it 
46 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

after  the  reporters  go.  We  see  the  flag  too 
often  to  be  stirred  by  every  flap  of  it,  and  we 
meet  too  many  fellow-citizens  to  be  sentimental 
about  them  all,  and  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  are 
rarely  mentioned,  and  the  guns  of  Manila  never 
boom  in  private  conversation,  and  nobody  con 
gratulates  you  on  freedom  of  worship,  trial  by 
jury,  or  the  mounting  exports  of  steel,  and  you 
go  to  sleep  without  dreaming  of  island  empires, 
and  you  wake  up  without  disparaging  Germany. 
These  awful  burdens  are  borne  only  by  public 
characters  aiming  at  the  lowest  wit  of  the  great 
est  number,  as  practical  statesmen  will,  and  under 
shooting  it  often,  we  are  bound  to  say.  Public 
ity  exacts  of  them  a  show  of  more  emotion  than 
they  ever  privately  feel.  They  must  keep  their 
love  of  country  at  honeymoon  heat,  poor  things ! 
And  never  was  a  land  so  complimented  down  to 
the  last  detail.  Hosanna  to  the  American  po 
tato!  it  is  forging  ahead  each  year.  Yet  it  is 
wasteful  to  write  a  serious  book  against  it,  for 
the  people  who  would  be  likely  to  read  it  do  not 
need  the  reproof.  And  it  is  a  great  mistake  to 
47 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

rouse  those  tedious  patriots  who  let  drive  at  the 
writer's  country  in  revenge.  And,  finally,  how 
do  the  pundits  in  race  traits  manage  to  gather 
so  quickly  the  souls  of  all  the  peoples  in  the  hol 
low  of  their  hands,  and  why  is  it  that  the  con 
clusions  of  such  detached  philosophers  invariably 
follow  the  flag?  It  is  a  whimsical  sort  of  writ 
ing,  the  more  whimsical  the  better,  and  ought 
never  to  be  measured  by  its  approach  to  absolute 
truth. 


48 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

II 

"AMERICANISM" 

AFTER  all,  the  crowd  certainly  likes  it — the 
kind  of  speech  that  a  Senator  once  made  at  a 
public  dinner,  which  I  happen  to  recall,  and  if  a 
man  wants  quick  returns  from  bursts  of  elo 
quence  this  is  the  kind  of  burst  he  should  carry 
in  his  manuscript  notes.  The  five  hundred  din 
ers  received  it  "with  great  enthusiasm,"  and  he 
could  scarce  go  on  for  the  "cheers  and  hand- 
clapping."  With  any  crowd  it  would  have  been 
the  same.  The  touch  of  nature?  Not  exactly. 
Only  the  touch  of  crowd  nature,  which  rubs  off 
when  you  are  alone.  In  the  meanwhile  what  has 
the  man  been  saying?  Why,  that  something  or 
other  is  epoch  making;  that  the  situation  is  in 
tense  ;  that  the  spirit  of  Puritanism  bids  us  reach 
forth,  expand,  blow  up,  roar,  and,  above  all, 
brag  that  we  are  God's  only  this  and  a  heaven- 
born  that  till  the  word  Americanism  sets  the 
whole  world  grinning.  "The  Pacific  is  the  Amer 
ican  Ocean.  The  Gulf  is  an  American  lake. 
49 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

.  .  .  Our  flag  floats  over  the  Antilles.  .  .  .  And 
when  the  Stars  and  Stripes  is  hauled  down  in 
Cuba,  let  it  hang  awhile  at  half-mast  in  mourning 
for  the  people  of  Cuba  abandoned  and  the  duty 
of  the  United  States  deserted.  These  are  epochal 
facts.  The  future  of  the  world  is  in  our  hands." 
This  is  no  one  man's  view.  It  is  crowd  language. 
It  is  the  echo  of  that  lower  harmony,  that  vulgar 
confluence  of  egotisms  by  which  we  tell  the  crowd 
whether  it  is  washed  or  unwashed,  at  a  New  Eng 
land  dinner  or  at  an  Australian  korroboree.  Why 
call  it  American?  Huxley  describes  the  natives 
of  one  of  the  islands  visited  by  the  Rattlesnake 
as  trying  to  impress  the  strangers  by  galloping 
along  the  shore,  "prancing  just  as  boys  do  when 
playing  horse."  It  is  not  peculiar  to  American 
senators. 

"The  Puritan,"  said  the  Senator,  "had  the 
logic  of  geography,  and  we  his  children  must 
have  it,  too.  .  .  .  All  Atlantic  and  Pacific  canals 
and  the  future  of  Central  America  so  far  as  af 
fected  thereby  are  American  questions — we  can 
not  permit  a  concert  of  powers  in  solving  them." 
SO 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

But  since  the  greater  includes  the  less,  why  talk 
of  the  future  of  Central  America?  It  was  the 
future  of  the  world  just  now.  Are  we  not  going 
to  have  the  whole  thing  then — we,  the  God's  onlys 
and  the  heaven-sent,  and  the  Je  suis  moi's  and  the 
Egomet  ipse's?  Only  a  hemisphere  after  all? 
Take  care  or  some  other  Senator  will  outflap  you. 
There  may  be  a  bigger  dinner  and  a  bigger  in 
spiration  and  a  lower  barrier  of  common  sense, 
and  some  one  who  will  know  how  to  take  advan 
tage  of  the  collective  mental  slump.  There  is 
always  that  danger  in  these  lower  appeals.  Talk 
of  islands  and  isthmuses,  and  the  next  man  may 
bid  continents.  Begin  with  planetary  systems, 
not  canals.  And  though  we  despise  it  in  private, 
you  are  quite  apt  to  find  that  a  herd  of  us  will 
first  endure,  then  pity,  then  hooray. 

"There  has  come  a  new  turn  in  the  world 
drama,"  says  another  orator.  "We  have  taken  the 
centre  of  the  stage.  .  .  .  We  see  the  faces  of  the 
nations  half  sneering,  half  fearing.  .  .  .  The 
world  has  grown  intensely  conscious  of  America." 
This  is  no  new  turn.  There  has  never  been  a 
51 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

moment  when  a  world  was  not  watching  us,  when 
a  continent  or  two  was  not  amazed  by  us  or  a 
hemisphere  provoked,  when  an  orator  was  not 
saying  just  what  Europe  thought  of  us,  how 
Asia  wondered  and  Africa  winked ;  and  that  man 
is  no  true  patriot  who  implies  that  even  for  an 
instant  we  were  not  the  centre  of  the  stage.  Nor 
is  it  a  mere  matter  of  nations.  It  is  a  cosmic 
affair,  with  gossip  going  on  in  the  Zodiac  and  a 
rumpus  in  the  Milky  Way,  Mars  sneering,  and 
Saturn  thunderstruck  and  an  uneasy  smile  on  the 
face  of  the  firmament  that  ill  conceals  its  fear. 
We  hate  a  cautious  patriot  who  talks  like  a  plum 
when  he  feels  like  a  pumpkin.  It  is  a  generous 
emotion,  and  why  not  let  it  go?  In  this  mood  a 
world  is  not  enough  for  us ;  we  bump  our  heads 
against  the  sky. 

But  the  chief  danger  is  the  collapse  of  the 
emotions  when  the  word  American  has  ceased 
thrilling  through  the  orator's  nose.  How  in  the 
world  can  we  keep  it  up?  It  is  not  a  solitaire 
game.  None  of  us  can  go  on  like  that  all  by 
himself  under  the  stars.  The  heavens  are  too 
52 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

sarcastic.  We  are  soon  feeling  uncomfortable 
and  hoping  nobody  heard.  Somebody  always 
does  hear.  That  is  the  worst  of  it.  Dickens 
heard,  and  he  gave  us  Martin  Chuzzlewit.  A 
few  jeer  at  it  as  your  true  Americanism.  A  few, 
who  are  deadly  serious,  prophesy  the  end  of  all 
things,  inhaling  odors  from  their  moral  vinai 
grette.  The  rest  of  us  understand  the  oratorical 
traditions  and  know  that  patriotism  is  not  de 
stroyed  by  burlesque. 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

III 

CONCERNING    HEROES 

IT  was  interesting  to  see  how  the  heroes  of  the 
South  African  war  weathered  the  .  flattery  that 
fell  upon  them.  It  was  a  rather  hard  test  of 
character.  Lord  Roberts  came  through  it  with 
all  his  wits  about  him  and  with  all  his  moral 
qualities  in  trim  working  order.  So,  probably, 
did  some  others ;  but,  reasoning  from  precedents, 
it  would  be  surprising  if  the  majority  of 
those  heroes  were  not  somewhat  damaged. 
The  odds  were  against  them.  By  the  time  the 
public  has  regained  its  senses  the  hero  has  lost 
his.  It  is  the  usual  way  the  story  ends,  and  there 
is  no  means  of  insuring  him  against  it.  You 
cannot  make  people  moderate  toward  their  heroes 
just  for  fear  of  spoiling  them.  When  a  gener 
ous  emotion  is  at  high  tide  and  the  bands  are 
playing  and  the  boys  are  bellowing  through  the 
megaphone,  and  the  variously  distorted  features 
of  the  idol  are  displayed  from  every  house  front, 
it  is  not  always  creditable  to  be  judicious.  "He 
54 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

that  hath  not  a  dram  of  folly  in  his  composition 
hath  pounds  of  a  worse  material."  A  man  may 
hold  himself  in  check  at  such  a  time  and  say  only 
what  is  wise.  It  may  be  that  his  wisdom  domi 
nates  his  impulses.  But  perhaps  he  lacks  the 
impulses.  It  may  be  that  he  has  a  heart  like  a 
cash  register  and  a  pulse  like  a  cold-boiled  ham. 
We  cannot  admire  him  until  we  know.  So  far 
as  he  himself  is  concerned,  no  man  need  be 
ashamed  of  the  foolish  things  he  said  to  or  about 
heroes  when  the  fit  was  on  him.  As  well  regret 
the  intemperate  language  of  his  honeymoon. 

Such  regret  as  one  feels  should  be  all  on  the 
hero's  account.  He  is  apt  to  be  in  a  bad  state 
when  we  are  through  with  him.  The  majority 
of  heroes  are  not  praise-proof.  It  is  nothing 
against  a  hero  that  he  is  not  praise-proof.  When 
a  whole  people  set  out  to  spoil  a  man,  he  is  not  to 
blame  if  they  succeed.  We  who  are  not  heroes 
cannot  estimate  the  difficulty  of  resistance,  but 
we  can  come  somewhere  near  it  by  multiplying 
our  own  experience.  We  know  how  we  feel  when 
we  are  praised.  The  mind  totters  under  a  very 
55 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

moderate  amount  of  it.  It  must  be  a  rock- 
bound  kind  of  person  that  remains  unmoved  when 
a  pleasant  warm  gush  of  flattery  is  playing  on 
him.  The  best  of  us  suspend  all  critical  self- 
examination  at  such  a  moment,  and  Heaven 
knows  what  would  happen  if  the  thing  lasted. 
It  is  a  joy  that  fuddles.  Fancy  it  raised  to  hero- 
power  and  lasting  for  twelve  months !  Would  it 
leave  us  as  it  found  us?  The  chances  are  we 
should  be  no  fit  company  for  any  man.  No  one 
knows  how  he  would  turn  out — whether  like 
Major  Goliath  O'Grady  Gahagan  or  like  Tour- 
gueniefF's  man  who  forever  afterward  had  "the 
air  of  his  own  statue  done  in  bronze  and  set  up 
by  national  subscription" — but  something  queer, 
you  may  be  sure,  and  in  all  probability  ridiculous. 
For,  as  the  satirist  said  of  poverty,  the  worst 
thing  about  it  is  that  it  makes  men  ridiculous. 
These  things  have  been  freshly  brought  to  mind, 
and  just  now  the  average  man  one  knows  would 
as  lief  not  be  a  hero. 

What  a  terrible  onslaught  was  made  on  those 
heroic  men  in  khaki.     Everything  was  done  to 
56 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

shatter  their  minds  and  undermine  their  charac 
ters.  If  they  were  modest  about  what  they  had 
done,  it  only  added  to  the  demoralizing  din.  They 
could  not  disclaim  without  redoubling  the  ap 
plause.  What  disgusts  at  first  becomes  grad 
ually  endurable,  then  pleasant,  then  indispens 
able,  then  the  hero  is  lost.  The  small  poets  begin 
on  him  immediately,  and  the  air  is  soon  buzzing 
with  little  odes.  He  shakes  off  the  small  poet  at 
first  with  some  annoyance.  When  an  unspoiled 
warrior  is  put  for  the  first  time  into  minor  verse 
he  hates  it.  It  makes  him  feel  like  a  pressed 
pansy.  No  living  man  is  a  fit  subject  for 
poetry,  and  as  soon  as  he  feels  at  home  in  it  that 
is  the  end  of  him.  Nothing  so  saps  a  hero  as 
persistent  odes,  and  it  is  to  the  credit  of  the  Amer 
ican  people  that  in  spite  of  their  inconsiderate 
waste  of  heroes  they  spared  them  this.'  Then 
there  are  the  kissing  women  and  the  flapping 
orators  and  the  town  hall  speeches  and  the  free 
dom  of  the  city  and  the  comparisons  with  Beli- 
sarius,  Caesar,  Nelson,  any  of  which,  if  prolonged, 
will  ruin  the  average  hero.  It  is  a  cruel  thing. 
57 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

The  only  hope  is  to  do  as  Kitchener  did,  or  Mar- 
chand  or  our  own  Lawton — treat  the  whole  thing 
as  a  foolish  love  affair  and  go  back  to  work. 
The  hero  should  leave  the  instant  he  begins  to 
take  it  seriously,  if  possible  before  the  wind  dies. 
A  becalmed  hero  waiting  around  for  more  wind  is 
in  a  bad  way.  So  is  one  who  has  contracted  the 
platform  habit.  A  hero  has  begun  to  go  to 
pieces  when  he  has  learned  to  like  what  he  ought 
never  to  have  heard. 

A  man  does  a  fine  thing  that  takes  our  fancy, 
so  we  reward  him  by  denying  him  the  privilege 
of  hearing  a  word  of  sense  for  months  at  a  time. 
Then  comes  a  reaction,  and  we  wonder  what  is 
the  matter  with  him.  It  was  all  our  fault,  and 
the  least  we  can  do  is  to  be  sorrowfully  patient 
with  our  handiwork.  There  may  be  a  way  of 
repairing  the  heroes  we  have  damaged,  though,  as 
Carlyle  points  out,  it  is  no  easy  task:  "The 
resuscitation  of  a  soul  that  has  gone  to  asphyxia 
is  no  momentary  or  pleasant  process,  but  a  long 
and  terrible  one."  A  mind  ravaged  by  applause 
deserves  charity  from  the  ravagers,  and  one 
58 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

should  know  beforehand  that  it  is  as  hard  to  keep 
a  hero  from  spoiling  on  your  hands  as  to  keep 
cream  through  a  thunderstorm. 


59 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 
IV 

A    "REMARKABLE"    MAN 

THE  mention  of  the  Defeated  Candidate's  name 
in  the  newspapers  sets  some  old  memories  to  stir 
ring.  So  there  was  such  a  man,  and  what  a  turn 
he  gave  some  of  us  in  the  dark  days  of  a  certain 
November  an  age  or  two  ago.  It  makes  one  feel 
safe  to  see  the  name  now;  also  a  little  foolish, 
for  was  there  ever  a  political  contest  in  which  the 
enemy  seemed  only  life  size?  He  is  no  longer 
"in  the  public  eye,"  as  the  magazines  say,  and 
for  that  reason  it  is  no  doubt  improper  to  speak 
of  him,  which  is  a  pity  on  some  accounts.  When 
a  man  of  this  sort  is  "in  the  public  eye"  there  is 
no  telling  anything  about  his  true  dimensions. 
He  is  in  there  like  a  cinder  and  seems  stupendous 
till  you  get  him  out.  Why  mention  him  now? 
To  attack  him?  No  more  of  that.  The  neces 
sity  of  being  serious  about  him  was  the  worst 
hardship  of  the  whole  campaign.  All  that  heavy 
moral  artillery  and  handsome  political  invective 
just  for  him!  No  doubt  the  language  was  appro- 
60 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

priate  to  the  occasion,  but  it  was  not  to  the  man. 
Napoleon  at  St.  Helena,  Boulanger  in  Belgium — 
get  the  man  as  far  away  as  possible  from  the 
occasion  if  you  would  see  him  as  he  is.  There 
were  some  "character  studies"  of  him  written  be 
fore  he  was  defeated,  and  very  queer  things  they 
now  seem, — mere  allegories  for  the  most  part,  as 
suming  that  he  was  an  incarnate  Principle,  which 
no  man  ever  is.  It  was  a  time  when  realism  was 
unsafe.  Some  would  say  he  compelled  the  ad 
miration  even  of  his  foes ;  for  several  of  the  lat 
ter,  while  duly  disapproving  of  him,  pronounced 
him  a  "remarkable"  man.  Publicity  always  has 
its  flunkeys,  deferential  to  anything  that  has  a 
crowd  behind  it.  It  is  the  optimism  of  a  democ 
racy.  The  man  who  carries  several  states  must 
be  great,  or  at  least  exceptional  in  some  way. 
There  is  no  allowance  made  for  accidents  in  this 
domain  of  success.  Does  the  two-spot  never 
come  uppermost  when  a  big  crowd  shuffles  the 
pack  ? 

So  it  chances  that  there  is  nothing  in  all  that 
has  been  said  of  the  Candidate  that  in  the  least 
61 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

applies  to  the  Defeated  Candidate,  who  happens 
to  be  publishing  a  newspaper  somewhere  in  the 
west.  A  page  of  that  publication  is  worth  more 
than  all  the  estimates  on  either  side.  In  the  first 
place  the  paper  does  not  suggest  any  moral  issue 
at  all.  The  editor  may  be  a  good  man  or  a  bad 
man — it  is  hard  to  realize  that  it  matters  which. 
The  main  point  is  that  he  is  not  a  man  who  would 
arrest  attention  for  one  instant.  It  is  a  school 
boy  mind  that  drives  that  paper,  no  matter  what 
the  political  writers  say.  Call  him  a  brilliant 
demagogue,  an  Orson  of  the  young  Democracy, 
an  Alcibiades,  or  whatever  you  like.  His  politics 
may  be  those  of  Lucifer,  but  his  mind  is  of  the 
age  of  innocence,  whether  it  is  innocent  or  not. 
That  is  the  striking  lesson  of  it — the  amazing 
exiguity  of  this  public  man.  How  did  the  coun 
try  happen  to  find  him  ?  And  when  intellects  like 
that  are  detected,  what  risks  of  greatness  we  all 
run. 

He  has  put  his  whole  soul  into  that  paper. 
He  has  struck  his  natural  pace.     If  any  man  has 
a  partisan  grudge  against  him  let  him  read  a 
62 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

page.  Begin,  say,  with  "Not  every  emperor 
wears  a  crown,"  and  end  with  the  passage :  "Un 
like  Julius  Caesar  and  George  Washington,  Mr. 
McKinley  did  not  reject  the  offer  of  a  throne." 
If  you  were  going  to  mend  this  man  where  would 
you  begin?  Not  with  his  morals,  surely,  nor 
even  with  his  politics.  What  George  Eliot  called 
the  "taint  of  commonness,"  hard  to  describe  as 
the  odor  of  onions  but  just  as  clearly  perceived 
— hangs  over  the  character  of  this  "remarkable" 
man.  That  he  should  have  run  for  president 
shows  how  we  let  things  slide.  After  that  no  one 
need  despair.  Let  him  push  and  there  is  a 
chance  that  the  crowd  will  let  him  through.  A 
commonplace  speech  at  a  hospitable  moment  may 
be  enough  for  a  start,  and  he,  too,  may  become  a 
personage  with  a  career  and  with  people  to  invent 
a  character  to  account  for  it.  And  though  he 
may  have  a  hundred  thousand  duplicates,  he  will 
be  a  "remarkable"  man  till  he  winds  up  like  Bou- 
langer  in  Belgium  or  publishing  a  "remarkable" 
newspaper  somewhere  in  the  west. 


63 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 


OLD    AND    NEW    DEBATERS 

DURING  the  last  few  years  we  have  plunged 
from  one  hot  debate  into  another,  and  if  for  a 
moment  •  the  excitement  has  subsided  over  here, 
some  other  country  has  been  sure  to  keep  our 
feelings  busy.  Never  in  their  lives  have  the  gen 
eration  born  since  the  civil  war  seen  the  civilized 
man  so  rampant  in  controversy.  One  aspect  of 
the  thing  is  rather  remarkable.  This  time  of 
stress  has  not  produced  in  the  United  States  or 
England  or  France  a  single  speech  or  bit  of  writ 
ing  above  the  ordinary.  For  all  the  training  of 
these  great  debates  there  have  been  no  great 
debaters.  Other  crises  have  left  a  legacy  of  elo 
quence,  but  the  man  who  can  recall  a  single  elo 
quent  passage  in  all  that  has  been  said  on  the 
most  absorbing  topics  of  the  last  two  years  must 
have  a  memory  like  a  bonded  warehouse.  To 
most  of  us  it  is  a  mere  reminiscence  of  confused 
noise,  the  greater  part  of  it  inarticulate.  The 
occasion  has  found  its  men  of  action  but  not  of 
64 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

speech.  The  lions  that  have  come  up  out  of 
Judah  have  not  been  very  impressive  in  their 
roars.  It  is  not  due  to  any  lack  of  sincerity  or 
force  of  feeling.  The  blowing  up  of  the 
Maine,  the  Rennes  court-martial,  the  Boer  ulti 
matum,  even  the  small  tempest  of  the  Puerto 
Rican  tariff  have  been  stirring  enough.  It  is 
only  the  art  of  arguing  that  has  fallen  on  evil 
days. 

The  arguing  man  assumes  as  a  rule  that  any 
thing  will  do  if  it  seems  to  be  travelling  his  way. 
He  commits  himself  to  all  sorts  of  non-essential 
points.  As  a  Boer  sympathizer,  for  instance,  he 
found  it  his  duty  to  show  the  trail  of  the  serpent 
in  England's  entire  South  African  experience 
since  1814,  when  fifteen  years  of  black  iniquity 
would  serve  his  turn  as  well  as  eighty-five.  So 
he  offends  the  common  sense  of  neutrals.  Again, 
he  would  have  free  trade  in  Puerto  Rico,  let  us 
say.  Instead  of  merely  pointing  out  that  it  is 
preferable,  he  straightway  tells  you  any  course 
but  this  is  hellish  inhumanity.  So,  when  you  ner 
vously  look  up  the  facts  and  find  nothing  in  them 
65 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

to  bear  out  comparisons  with  the  Black  Death  or 
St.  Bartholomew's  Day,  you  are  very  likely  to 
dismiss  the  whole  thing  from  your  mind.  That 
is  the  trouble  with  our  latter-day  debaters.  They 
breed  distrust  in  the  honest  doubters.  What  is 
the  use  of  raising  one's  whole  vocabulary  to  the 
tenth  power?  It  simply  inflates  the  verbal  cur 
rency.  Other  people  involuntarily  extract  the 
tenth  root  of  everything  you  say.  The  "traitor" 
and  "tyrant"  of  our  Philippine  discussions  have 
weakened  debate  and  lessened  the  reserve  strength 
of  the  English  language.  These  things  become 
merely  conventional.  They  go  through  the  same 
process  as  profanity,  which,  as  we  know,  is 
hardly  emphatic  on  the  lips  of  the  habitually 
profane.  It  is  a  most  inartistic  kind  of  arguing 
that  gives  the  impression  that  you  are  either  talk 
ing  for  effect  or  a  little  "hipped"  on  the  subject. 
Many  a  good  soul  throws  his  chance  away  by 
forgetting  this. 

The  old  debaters,  whether  contending  for  a 
good  cause  or  a  bad,  appreciated  the  value  of 
mere   plausibility.     They    counterfeited   candor 
66 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

and  sanity  if  they  had  them  not.  Above  all,  they 
tried  to  ingratiate  by  admissions,  and  they  never 
encumbered  themselves  with  big,  awkward  as 
sumptions  of  incredible  villainy.  Running 
through  all  the  great  controversial  speeches  and 
writings  there  is  a  vein  of  reasonableness  and  self- 
restraint.  Whether  it  was  Lincoln  or  Burke,  or 
a  Greek  general,  or  Beelzebub  in  Paradise  Lost, 
or  one  of  Shakespeare's  villains,  they  gave  no 
impression  of  hypocrisy  or  hysteria.  But  the 
maladroit  debater  will  somehow  give  this  im 
pression  even  though  he  is  as  sound  in  head 
and  heart  as  one  could  wish.  Stirring  oratory 
is  not  that  in  which  every  sentence  has  a  hectic 
flush. 

But  apart  from  mere  ignorance  of  the  art,  a 
reason  for  the  failure  of  our  present  debaters 
may  be  their  distrust  of  the  public.  The  public 
is  not  thought  worthy  of  being  talked  to  sensibly. 
There  is  a  mortal  terror  of  giving  one's  case 
away.  A  truth  must  be  swaddled  with  overstate 
ments  when  it  walks  abroad.  You  will  find  plenty 
of  men  who  will  talk  more  reasonably  in  private 
67 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

than  they  would  think  of  doing  for  the  press  or 
platform.  Intelligent  men  do  not  as  a  rule  as 
sume,  in  talking  with  us  privately,  that  all  wis 
dom  and  all  virtue  are  with  them.  They 
agree  with  us  in  some  points,  and  they  try  to 
understand  our  point  of  view.  But  in  addressing 
us  collectively  they  will  show  the  most  shocking 
cynicism  as  to  what  we  can  understand.  They 
prejudge  us  as  altogether  foolish,  and  talk  to 
us  accordingly.  Many  a  thought  will  be  held 
back  because  it  is  supposed  to  be  too  big  for  us. 
Yet,  when  has  the  public  ever  been  hurt  by 
breadth  of  view,  and  who  ever  delivered  a  signifi 
cant  message  when  he  was  tortured  every  minute 
by  the  dread  of  being  misunderstood  ?  The  truth 
is,  the  public  can  stand  from  any  man  the  best 
there  is  in  him.  No  man  ever  made  a  deep  im 
pression  who  tried  to  do  all  his  thinking  in 
majorities.  Our  current  controversies  are  for 
this  reason  needlessly  dull.  One  cannot  suppress 
the  fanatic.  He  will  be  on  hand  to  do  his  worst 
for  every  cause.  But  it  is  possible  to  take  a 
kindlier  view  of  popular  intelligence  and  to  aim 
68 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

a  little  higher  in  one's  style  of  arguments.  For 
after  all,  the  good  debater,  like  the  good  work 
man  in  any  other  art,  finds  when  he  has  made  his 
masterpiece,  that  he  has  made  his  public,  too. 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

VI 

ASPERITIES    OF    PEACEMAKING 

Is  IT  because  we  are  jingoes  that  we  are  so 
little  stirred  by  the  sort  of  things  certain  earnest 
writers  are  saying  against  war?  That  is  what 
they  would  maintain.  Goldwin  Smith  has  been 
attacking  the  idea  that  a  nation  can  cure  itself 
of  its  vices  by  going  to  war  with  another  nation. 
Tolstoi's  well-known  views  have  appeared  in  an 
English  translation,  and  several  other  eminent 
writers  have  recently  denounced  war  at  some 
length.  It  has  also  become  what  is  known  as  a 
"timely  topic,"  which  means  that  almost  any 
thing  any  one  chooses  to  say  about  it  finds  its 
way  into  print.  So  it  happens  that  many  grown 
up  persons  have  published  compositions  on  the 
relative  merits  of  love  and  hate  and  the  impro 
priety  of  bloodshed.  With  Tolstoi  it  is  only  a 
part  of  a  pretty  comprehensive  gospel.  He 
would  turn  us  all  at  once  into  something  pure  and 
primitive  and  sweet,  and,  as  regards  art 
matters,  into  something  exceedingly  stupid, 
70 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

getting  rid  of  certain  intellectual  vices 
by  abolishing  intellect  altogether,  it  would 
seem.  But  there  is  a  holy  flame  in  the 
old  man,  and  he  is  really  beyond  us,  and  not  at 
all  to  blame  if  we  never  catch  up,  and  it  is  a  pity 
if  literature  is  to  have  nothing  to  do  with  the 
things  that  are  not.  He  is  an  idealist  through 
and  through,  and  hates  war  no  more  than  he  hates 
every  other  curse  that  our  sins  bring  down  on 
us.  The  peace  advocates  of  the  newspapers  are 
not  usually  of  that  stamp.  I  do  not  presume  to 
question  their  motives,  but  the  fine  idealism  they 
reveal  on  that  subject  does  not  seem  to  extend  to 
other  things.  Truth,  for  example,  is  as  good  a 
thing  as  peace,  and  is  needful  even  in  advocating 
peace.  They  have  steadily  assumed  that  if  you 
do  not  fall  in  with  them  you  are  an  enemy  to  the 
cause.  Does  that  follow? 

What  is  the  matter  with  us  that,  in  spite  of  a 
longing  for  universal  peace  quite  as  strong  as 
theirs,  they  no  sooner  begin  to  preach  than  we 
hunt  for  arguments  on  the  other  side?  It  may 
be  our  weak  and  sinful  natures.  It  may  be  some- 
71 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

thing  in  the  way  they  do  it.  One  has  a  right  to 
consider  before  setting  himself  down  as  a  mur 
derous  old  war-dog  just  because  he  does  not  en 
joy  the  average  peace  harangue.  In  the  first 
place,  they  make  the  case  too  plain.  It  is  an 
artificial  and  insincere  simplicity,  with  all  the 
perplexing  things  left  out.  Surely  there  are  some 
perplexing  things  about  man.  With  the  reform 
er's  man  it  is  always  a  naked  choice  between 
heaven  and  hell.  With  God's  man  it  is  different. 
Nine  times  out  of  ten  the  poor  devil  does  not  know 
which  is  which,  for  the  good  and  evil  have  been 
jumbled  together  and  the  colors  have  run,  and 
even  when  he  really  wants  to  be  an  angel  the  re 
sults  are  mixed.  How  can  you  prescribe  for  him, 
if  you  do  not  know  what  he  is  like?  It  is  a  bad 
philosophy  that  is  founded  on  omissions.  Yet  the 
peace  talkers  expurgate  history  for  this  purpose, 
as  the  temperance  orator  expurgates  science,  feel 
ing  that  somehow  the  whole  truth  would  hurt  us 
and  that  the  way  to  save  souls  is  to  go  sneaking 
around  the  facts.  And  they  treat  us  all  as  if  we 
belonged  to  that  class  of  warlike  rhapsodists  who 
72 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

regard  war  as  a  sentimental  tonic — quinine  for 
our  bad  malarious  morals.  Not  a  word  for  those 
who  are  not  so  far  gone. 

"War,"  said  the  late  Dean  Farrar,  "is  a 
fraction  of  that  Armageddon  struggle  described 
in  the  Apocalypse,"  and  so  on  in  a  poetic  strain 
very  flattering  to  war.  To  which  Goldwin 
Smith  retorted  that  the  dean  "would  touch  less 
lightly  on  dread  of  the  horrors  of  war 
as  a  motive  for  avoiding  it  if  he  had  seen  the 
wreck  of  a  battlefield,  the  contents  of  a  field  hos 
pital  after  a  battle,  or  even  the  burning  farms 
of  the  Transvaal,  with  the  women  and  children 
turned  adrift,  as  an  eye-witness  describes  them, 
and  desperately  trying  to  rescue  something  from 
their  homes."  So  he  would,  no  doubt,  and  his 
present  language  is  quite  absurd ;  but  the  peace 
enthusiast  would  "touch  less  lightly"  on  the  dif 
ficulties  of  keeping  out  of  war  if  he  took  more 
pains  to  know  men  as  they  are.  It  would  be 
easy  enough  to  put  the  world  to  rights  if  there 
were  so  little  in  it.  Preaching  against  blood- 
thirstiness  in  general  does  not  seem  to  fit  when 
73 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

you  are  tormented  by  the  circumstances  of  some 
particular  case,  and  wondering  if  war  is  the 
worse  alternative.  But  the  average  reformer  will 
have  nothing  to  do  with  circumstance.  He 
snubs  it,  acts  as  if  he  had  never  met  it;  if  he 
"disapproves  of  Asia,  Asia  is  no  more." 

More  of  us  are  with  the  peace  people  in  their 
premises  than  they  seem  to  think.  We  do  not 
enjoy  butchery,  and  are  not  gloating  over  Fili 
pino  bones  or  South  African  ashes.  Theirs  is  not 
a  voice  crying  in  the  wilderness.  On  the  ele 
ments  of  .morals  we  are  agreed,  and  we  dare  go 
as  far  as  the  South  Carolina  poet : 

The  man  who  thinks  God  is  too  nnd 

To  punish  actions  vile, 
Is  bad  at  heart,  of  unsound  mind, 

Or  very  juvenile. 

Only,  one  does  not  feel  like  saying  it  very 
often,  because  it  seems  as  if  people  must  know. 
But  we  are  with  them  at  heart — these  sparrows 
on  the  housetops — and  they  must  make  room  for 
us  by  their  side.  It  is  foolish  to  go  on  living  like 
a  moral  hermit  when  there  is  no  need  of  it.  But 
perhaps  they  enjoy  it,  and  we  may  be  de  trop. 
74 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

The  chief  ob j  ection  is  to  the  method  employed. 
If  the  world  is  already  so  bad,  what  is  the  use  of 
keeping  it?  If  this  country  is  hopelessly  cor 
rupt  and  democracy  a  failure,  and  conscience 
dried  up,  and  commercialism  rampant,  and  virtue 
all  gone,  why  not  leave  us  to  go  to  our  own  place, 
like  Judas?  And  what  better  route  is  there  than 
war?  The  truth  is,  when  a  man  begins  to 
prophesy  ruin  because  his  country  goes  to  war, 
he  is  apt  before  long,  particularly  if  he  is  a  little 
undersized,  to  pray  for  what  he  prophesies,  just 
to  punish  the  country  and  bring  her  to  her  senses 
— and  vindicate  him.  And  he  counts  up  his  dead 
compatriots  with  an  enthusiasm  that  is  not  ex 
actly  pious,  and  he  accepts  defeat  with  a  com 
placency  that  is  not  merely  altruistic,  and  almost 
any  degree  of  patriotism  strikes  him  as  exces 
sive,  and  any  kind  of  national  rejoicing  as  vul 
gar.  One  may  see  this  in  him  and  still  be  peace- 
loving,  and  one  may  dislike  it  without  being  a 
war-dog.  It  often  happens  that  what  a  man  of 
this  type  sets  down  as  lust  for  blood  on  your  part 
is  after  all  only  a  harmless  hankering  for  com- 
75 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

mon  sense.  It  is  a  bad  way  to  grow  old.  The 
memoirs  of  old  men  are  so  often  full  of  it — the 
world  winding  up  in  darkness  because  their  light 
fails.  If  we  discount  it  a  little  now  and  then,  it 
does  not  follow  that  we  are  cutthroats  or  even 
lukewarm  in  the  interests  of  peace. 


76 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

VII 

MEASURING  AN  AMERICAN  REPUTATION 

SOME  years  ago  an  enterprising  American  col 
lege  president  conceived  the  notion  of  a  Hall  of 
Fame  for  great  Americans,  with  a  hundred 
judges  to  decide  who  should  be  glorified.  Where 
upon  a  serious-minded  writer  declared  that  to 
decide  the  question  of  fame  by  the  majority  vote 
of  a  hundred  wise  men  was  in  some  sort  impious, 
because  it  left  "the  divine  will  out  of  the  matter 
altogether."  When  people  are  enjoying  them 
selves  someone  with  a  swollen  conscience  is  sure 
to  come  along  and  complain  about  it.  As  if  we 
were  going  to  make  Providence  feel  de  trop  by 
guessing  about  our  great  men.  It  is  as  good  a 
game  of  chance  as  was  ever  thought  of.  It  re 
quires  skill  and  knowledge  and  some  searching  of 
the  heart,  and  the  subject  matter  is  intensely  in 
teresting.  The  results  are  surprising  to  the 
judges  themselves  and  to  everybody  else.  Every 
group  of  a  hundred  men,  wise  or  foolish,  would 
decide  differently,  and  the  same  group  would 
77 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

change  its  mind  in  a  month  if  its  members  were 
ordinarily  progressive.  For  the  longer  you  think 
and  the  further  you  read,  the  more  reputations 
you  discover,  and  some  of  the  new  are  sure  to 
crowd  out  the  old  ones.  George  Washington 
and  a  few  others  are  fixtures,  but  the  lesser  names 
go  in  and  out  of  your  mind  constantly,  and  how 
many  you  can  find  there  and  who  they  are  will 
depend  on  what  time  of  day  it  is.  As  to  names 
like  Elias  Howe,  your  memory  merely  flirts  with 
them.  You  have  found  twenty-nine  great  men 
and  must  have  one  more.  William  Morris  Hunt 
is  in,  and  so  is  Gilbert  Stuart.  Poe  will  not  do, 
because  he  drank,  and,  besides,  poetry  is  well 
enough  represented  as  it  is.  Soldiers  are  not  in 
your  line,  and  they  should  be  kept  down  anyhow 
for  fear  of  militarism.  A  useful  person  is  needed 
— an  inventor.  A  sewing  machine  buzzes  in  the 
next  room,  and  Elias  Howe  comes  to  mind,  and 
you  take  him.  There  is  a  broad  zone  of  indif 
ference  where  you  are  lucky  if  you  can  find  even 
a  whim.  In  this  haphazard  region  the  best  and 
wisest  of  men  is  no  better  than  a  mob. 
78 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

What  is  the  unit  of  measure — the  foot-pound, 
ohm,  volt  or  square  millimeter  of  glory?  Take 
one  of  the  simpler  problems.  Here  are  Hunt, 
Howe,  Stuart  and  Poe  waiting  to  be  graded. 
First  find  the  common  denominator  of  ?  sewing 
machine  and  the  Lenox  Lyceum.  This  will  en 
able  you  to  compare  the  inventive  genius  of  Howe 
with  Hunt's  skill  as  an  architect.  Then  see  how 
many  times  the  answer  will  go  into  Poe's  Raven 
and  Stuart's  paintings  of  the  presidents.  Sub 
tract  five  from  Poe  because  he  was  so  dissipated. 
Add  two  to  Howe  because,  though  he  was  reduced 
for  years  to  driving  an  engine,  he  never  took  to 
drink.  Be  honest  with  yourself,  but  bear  in  mind 
that  you  alone  cannot  make  a  reputation.  You 
must  consider  the  point  of  view  of  other  men  and 
also  of  the  angels.  If  you  have  no  preference 
yourself,  find  one  and  take  its  measure.  Do  not 
forget  that  you  are  to  decide  not  merely  where 
glory  is,  but  where  it  ought  to  be.  When  you 
have  made  up  your  mind  do  not  touch  it,  but 
treat  an  opinion  as  if  you  had  married  it.  Find 
out  what  you  yourself  think,  what  you  think 
79 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

other  people  are  thinking,  how  the  thing  is  looked 
at  in  heaven,  and  what  sort  of  an  influence  it 
may  have  on  the  young.  Out  of  it  all  must  come 
a  decision  fit  to  be  carved  on  imperishable  stone. 
It  is  matter  for  flashlights  and  bulletins.  But 
we  do  not  commemorate  our  dead  in  that  man 
ner.  To  correspond  with  actual  conditions  there 
should  be  a  thousand  halls  of  fame,  and  in  each 
one  a  biographical  dictionary  on  a  whirligig. 
It  would  not  do  to  have  the  same  biographical 
dictionary.  Reputations  go  up  and  down  like 
stocks,  whether  men  have  been  ten  years  dead  or 
fifty.  Yet  if  you  come  out  with  a  list  of  your 
forty  favorites  caught  on  the  fly  you  are  charged 
with  departing  from  absolute  truth.  There  has 
never  yet  been  a  biographical  compendium  whose 
editor  has  not  been  blamed  for  leaving  out  names 
far  more  important  than  those  he  put  in.  Never 
theless  it  will  be  a  bad  thing  for  the  honored 
dead  if  the  time  ever  comes  when  we  agree  about 
them.  Settle  once  and  for  all  their  order  of 
merit  and  hundreds  would  never  be  heard  of. 
Now,  there  is  Elias  Howe,  who  has  at  last  got 
80 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

what  he  deserved — a  decent  talking  about.  It  is 
queer  material  for  carving  on  stone,  but  no 
queerer  than  much  that  we  put  there.  There  are 
signs  that  the  city  of  New  York  can  be  pretty 
frivolous  even  in  bronze.  The  discussion  is  the 
main  thing.  Gossip  responds  to  a  human  need, 
and  gossip  about  dead  men  cannot  hurt  them. 
It  clearly  shows  the  stuff  that  reputations  below 
a  certain  grade  are  made  of.  Many  of  the 
smaller  glories  owe  their  longevity  to  the  lazy- 
mindedness  of  the  survivors,  for  who  can  afford 
to  be  painstaking  about  such  trifles  ? 

How  tell  which  is  the  greater  of  two  men  when 
neither  is  great  at  all?  The  best  way  is  to  shut 
your  eyes  and  guess  at  it.  If  it  were  James  K. 
Polk  and  Julius  Caesar  it  would  be  one  thing. 
But  it  is  James  K.  Polk  and  E.  P.  Roe,  and 
Hunt,  and  Howe,  and  Dolly  Madison.  Guess, 
and  think  no  more  about  it.  If  you  were  the 
editor  of  a  biographical  dictionary,  part  of  the 
work  would  consist  in  this  very  thing.  Some  one 
would  write  in  and  complain  that  half  a  page  was 
given  to  Jones  and  Brown  was  left  out  alto- 
81 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

gether.  Yet  if  you  aim  at  the  Jones  point  of 
thoroughness  you  should  logically  include  not 
only  Brown,  but  a  hundred  others.  The  grave 
yards  are  choked  with  men  of  the  Jones  degree. 
It  is  no  doubt  true.  But  what  is  the  harm  in 
guessing  Jones?  Oblivion  will  get  them  all  in 
the  long  run;  the  final  marks  will  not  be  ready 
till  the  day  of  judgment,  and  in  the  meanwhile 
why  should  we  not  discuss  our  taste  in  dead  men  ? 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

VIII 
DEMOCRATIC    GENTILITY 

A  PRETTY  row  is  sure  to  follow  any  public  refer 
ence  to  good  breeding,  especially  to  an  alleged 
criterion  or  condition  precedent  of  good  breed 
ing.  An  Anglo-Saxon  community  cannot  stand 
it.  Once,  when  an  eminent  naval  officer  opposed 
the  promotion  of  warrant  officers  on  the  ground 
that  they  lacked  social  qualifications,  a  United 
States  senator  all  aglow  with  the  spirit  of  Jean 
Jacques  and  Robert  Burns  and  the  Declaration 
called  him  a  "snob"  and  a  "coward"  and  a  "con 
ceited  ass."  I  am  not  now  concerned  with  the 
merits  of  the  case,  but  only  with  the  heat  of  the 
language.  There  are  terrible  passions  in  this 
field,  and  they  lie  very  near  the  surface. 

In  England  it  is  about  the  same,  or  possibly 
worse.  A  few  years  ago  the  best  behaved  of 
British  weeklies  quoted  with  approval  in  one  of 
its  book  reviews  the  remark  that  a  gentleman  was 
a  "man  who  played  the  game;"  that  is  to  say, 
fitted  in  well  with  the  company  he  was  thrown 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

with,  did  not  cheat  or  interfere  or  insist  on  play 
ing  his  own  game  or  the  wrong  game  at  the 
wrong  time.  That  set  things  going.  Gentle 
men  who  felt  that  this  left  them  out  wanted  an 
other  definition.  Correspondents  squabbled  with 
one  another  and  with  the  editor,  and  exchanged 
volleys  of  quotations  from  the  dictionary  and 
the  Bible  and  the  Elizabethan  poets  and  the 
Herald's  College.  Some  said  it  all  depended  on 
the  great-grandfather's  occupation,  which,  of 
course,  shocked  the  great-grandfatherless  and 
brought  out  in  rebuttal  a  host  of  proverbs  on  the 
order  of  "handsome  is  as  handsome  does."  The 
writers  sometimes  reinforced  their  arguments  by 
giving  their  addresses  at  highly  respectable 
clubs,  and  one  of  them  crushed  his  adversary  by 
sheer  weight  of  personal  dignity.  "Being  my 
self  in  business,"  he  said,  "albeit  a  descendant  of 
the  princes  of  Wales  of  the  old  race  as  well  as  a 
descendant  of  that  more  modern  stock,  the  Nor 
man  and  Plantagenet  kings  and  their  alliances, 
I  feel  Mr.  C.'s  definition  as  a  species  of  insult; 
but,  thank  the  gods !  the  term  'gentleman'  is  de- 
84 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

rived  rather  from  a  man's  conduct  toward  others 
than  from  any  fictitious  virtue  of  ancestry." 

The  real  cause  of  these  disturbances  is  the 
odious  nature  of  the  facts  themselves.  One  side 
says  that  there  are  such  things  as  social  dis 
tinctions;  the  other  side,  which  is  always  the 
more  numerous,  says  that  such  distinctions  are 
wrong,  and  it  does  not  want  to  have  them  men 
tioned.  The  champion  of  the  "plain  people"  in 
variably  has  the  advantage.  He  knows  that  the 
plain  people  have  a  rooted  aversion  to  plain 
truths,  and  that  each  branch  of  our  race  has  one 
social  code  for  private  use  and  another  for  public 
exhibition.  You  will  never  catch  him  in  the  in 
discretion  of  a  public  allusion  to  social  qualifi 
cations,  though  in  private  he  may  grade  men  ac 
cording  to  the  kind  of  cuffs  they  wear  or  snub 
the  pure  in  heart  merely  because  they  chew 
tobacco.  Everybody  knows  that  manners,  fam 
ily,  habits,  clothes  and  like  irrelevancies  down  to 
the  smallest  details  of  toothpick  and  napkin  man 
agement  are  the  chief  bonds  or  barriers  between 
men  and  between  nations ;  that  snobbery  in  one 
85 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

form  or  another  is  eternal  and  omnipotent,  and 
bigger  than  humanity  itself.  Not  a  herd  of 
cattle  without  its  "consciousness  of  kind,"  which 
implies  a  certain  social  hauteur  toward  every 
other  kind.  But  it  is  not  a  subject  to  go  before 
the  crowd  with.  It  is  a  principle  on  which  we 
shape  our  whole  lives,  but  when  we  speak  above 
a  whisper  let  us  only  say :  "A  man's  a  man  for  a' 
that."  The  crowd  would  rather  be  ill-served 
than  admit  for  a  moment  that  a  man  could  be 
socially  disqualified  for  his  job,  no  matter  what 
his  job  might  be. 

Once  in  a  while  we  hear  grumblings  from 
abroad  about  the  characters  of  our  diplomatic 
representatives.  Some  one  has  said  that  many  of 
them  in  the  past  had  been  "socially  impossible." 
This  may  be  absolutely  untrue,  but  the  point  is 
that  if  it  were  clearly  shown  that  American  rep 
resentatives  were  so  regarded  and  that  as  a  result 
the  service  suffered,  we  should  make  no  open  at 
tempt  to  mend  matters.  A  lesson  might  be 
learned  and  changes  might  be  made  from  behind 
the  scenes,  but  of  one  thing  we  are  positive :  An 
86 


THE    CROWDED    FORUM 

American  statesman  would  rise  sublimely  on  the 
floor  of  the  Senate  in  the  full  view  of  the  plain 
people  and  say  that  if  a  good  American  was  not 
good  enough  for  a  European  power  that  power 
was  a  "snob,"  "coward"  arid  ''conceited  ass,"  or 
words  to  that  effect. 


87 


PART  III 

THE    FRIGHTENED 
MINORITY 


SETTING    THE    PACE 

A  FEARLESS  preacher  once  reproved  the  Newport 
gentry  for  their  worldly  ways,  and  the  subject 
was  solemnly  discussed  in  the  newspapers  for 
two  solid  weeks.  It  was  a  sort  of  court  sermon. 
Though  uncompromising  toward  sin,  he  did  not 
for  a  minute  forget  the  social  position  of  the  sin 
ners.  In  fact,  the  size  of  the  sin  seemed  to  be  in 
proportion  to  the  importance  of  that  social  posi 
tion,  so  there  was  no  doubt  a  sweet  side  to  the  sor 
row  at  the  bigness  of  it.  A  rebuke  like  that  is 
always  reassuring  to  an  aristocracy  that  is  a  little 
new  at  the  business  and,  therefore,  a  little  doubt- 
88 


THE   FRIGHTENED   MINORITY 

f ul  of  itself.  The  eyes  of  fifty  million  American 
citizens  are  upon  you,  so  take  care  what  you  do, 
said  he.  It  is  a  hard  heart  that  this  would  not 
touch.  And  there  is  no  class  of  people  in  the 
world  that  needs  such  recognition  more  than  this 
aristocracy  of  ours,  and  they  were  grateful  even 
for  this  polite  untruth.  The  most  discourag 
ing  thing  about  our  fashionable  society  is  that 
so  few  people  know  of  it.  If  there  were  only  a 
bigger  crowd  peering  over  the  railing  it  would 
be  more  fun  to  be  inside.  Where  is  the  good  of 
being  exclusive  when  so  few  realize  that  they  are 
shut  out?  It  takes  something  of  a  specialist  to 
keep  track  even  of  their  names.  There  is  a  fringe 
of  socially  ambitious  people  who  know,  and  there 
are  sporadic  cases  of  an  abnormal  kind  of  interest 
in  dry  society  data  on  the  part  of  persons  who 
have  never  met  any  of  the  participants  and  do 
not  expect  to  meet  them.  But  except  for  a  half 
dozen  or  so  of  egregious  persons,  and  these  egre 
gious  mainly  by  their  wealth,  the  names  of  our 
local  leaders  of  fashion  are  to  the  average  man 
as  the  names  of  Hindoo  gods. 
89 


THE  FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 

We  have  no  loyal  peasantry  or  deferential 
tradespeople  or  awestruck  middle  class.  There 
is  no  common  standard  of  fashionable  values. 
Social  distinctions  assume  a  hundred  thousand 
forms.  There  are  about  as  many  peerages  as 
there  are  men.  What  is  a  leader  of  a  cotillon  to 
the  average  citizen  compared  to  the  Royal  Arch. 
Something  of  his  particular  lodge?  And  there 
are  mighty  honors  almost  within  his  reach.  May 
he  not  hope  some  day  to  be  the  Supreme  Secre 
tary  of  his  order  of  the  Hidden  Sanctuary,  and 
wear  twelve  badges  and  a  red  fez  ?  The  cards  of 
invitation  which  our  young  Pendennis  sticks  in 
his  looking  glass  do  not  even  dazzle  his  landlady. 
Social  triumphs  are  too  esoteric  over  here.  In 
general  our  dollared  gentry  are  envied  only  for 
their  dollars.  Specialists  in  fashionable  matters 
assume  a  range  of  information  that  does  not  exist. 
The  details  of  the  society  columns  are  cabalistic 
to  all  but  a  few,  and  the  good  or  bad  effects  of 
what  is  technically  called  fashionable  example 
may  not  reach  across  the  street.  And  yet  there 
is  always  some  one  watching  nervously  to  see  if 
90 


THE  FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 

they  drink  more  than  they  used  to  or  play  for 
higher  stakes,  or  if  the  women  are  taking  to  cock 
tails  or  smoking  cigarettes.  If  they  find  out 
anything  they  pass  the  word  along,  and  straight 
way  a  flurried  moralist  will  ask  if  there  is  any 
virtue  left  among  our  leisure  classes.  "Wealth 
and  luxury  have  changed  greatly  the  atmosphere 
of  American  life."  We  are  all  in  immediate  dan 
ger  of  divorcing  our  wives  and  floating  sinward 
on  a  flood  of  dry  champagne. 

By  the  cockfights  of  our  ancestors  I  protest 
against  the  doctrine  that  such  things  are  new. 
What  past  date  have  these  people  in  mind?  Was 
it  when  England's  greatest  jurist  said  an  occa 
sional  booze  expanded  the  emotions  and  mellowed 
the  manners  of  her  growing  youth?  Or  was  it 
when  the  leading  statesmen  of  the  century  lived 
their  whole  lives  out  without  getting  even  with 
their  gambling  debts?  This  among  a  class  of 
people  that  might  well  have  set  the  pace.  Be 
labor  us  as  much  as  you  like,  but  why  let  our 
forefathers  off  so  easily?  Making  demi-gods  of 
forefathers  is  an  old  practice.  You  would  sup- 
91 


THE  FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 

pose  that  people  who  wished  to  prove  us  worse 
than  they  would  be  at  some  pains  to  show  us  what 
manner  of  folk  they  were.  As  a  rule  they  skip 
all  that.  They  pass  over  our  forefathers  with 
gentle  generalities.  With  us  they  are  terribly 
concrete.  There  is  no  fair  basis  of  comparison. 
They  talk  of  forefathers  as  if  they  were  a  first 
wife.  The  second  wife  may  be  just  as  good,  but 
she  happens  to  be  on  hand.  That  is  the  trouble 
with  us.  We  are  blamed  just  because  we  are  not 
dead. 

It  is  not  fair  to  compare  the  eighteenth  cen 
tury  as  seen  in  Henry  Esmond  with  the  twentieth 
century  as  seen  on  Fourteenth  Street.  Some 
thing  should  be  allowed  for  stained-glass  effects. 
We  have  chosen  to  fit  up  the  past  as  a  playroom 
for  our  imaginations.  We  arrange  it  pictu 
resquely  and  throw  out  the  things  we  do  not  like. 
It  is  a  good  place  for  a  rainy  day,  but  how  about 
spending  our  whole  lives  in  it?  Ruffs  and  pow 
dered  periwigs  and  very  low  bows,  even  profanity 
delighting  by  the  quaintness  of  it — no  better 
place  for  an  aristocratic  outlook  on  this  mean 
92 


THE  FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 

generation.  But  the  sponging  house  and  the 
eternal  drunkenness  and  the  mean  servility  of 
dependent  classes,  and  the  polite  breakfast  on  the 
occasion  of  the  hanging,  and  the  omnipresent 
illiteracy — why  not  mention  these  things  and 
others,  if  only  to  show  that  the  real  eighteenth 
century  is  what  you  have  in  mind?  As  the  world 
moves  along  there  are  a  lot  of  people  in  every 
generation  who  are  sorry  they  came.  They  are 
instinctive  partisans  of  any  kind  of  forefather. 

But  to  return  to  our  fashionable  exemplars. 
The  truth  of  the  matter  is  there  is  no  social  circle 
that  could  stand  the  scrutiny  that  is  brought  to 
bear  upon  what  society  reporters  call  the  elite. 
There  are  scandals  in  Cornville  just  as  bad.  Peo 
ple  write  of  our  fashionable  society  with  a  lot  of 
Ouidaesque  notions  at  the  back  of  their  heads. 
Cynical,  worldly,  epigrammatic  and  blase — 
where  are  all  those  characters  of  Mrs.  Burton 
Harrison  and  the  others  who  have  followed  her  in 
a  troop  ?  Whatever  our  aristocracy  may  be,  it  is 
not  effete.  The  novelty  of  external  things  has 
not  worn  off.  In  point  of  simplicity  it  compares 
93 


THE  FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 

well  with  any  other  class,  for  simplicity  is  not  a 
matter  of  cost.  Some  very  expensive  pleasures 
may  be  almost  heartrending  in  their  simplicity. 
A  complex  person  would  soon  go  mad,  and  there 
is  nothing  in  them  even  for  a  corrupt  heart.  But 
people  do  not  like  to  write  of  it  as  it  is  (even 
when  they  know)  for  fear  of  being  dull. 

There  has  grown  up  a  fiction  about  the  morals 
of  this  class  and  about  the  force  of  its  example. 
We  are  badly  in  need  of  some  one  who  will  em 
phasize  the  unromantic  truth.  The  thing  that  is 
ground  into  a  candid  mind,  making  its  observa 
tions  at  first  hand,  is  that  the  morals  of  those  peo 
ple  are  by  no  means  their  weakest  spot.  Like 
most  classes  of  men  and  women,  they  are  not  so 
bad  as  they  are  painted,  and  a  good  deal  stupider. 
And  as  to  the  example,  he  will  have  discovered 
this :  He  may  travel  fifty  miles  up  and  down  and 
across  Manhattan  Island  without  meeting  a  sin 
gle  person  who  knows  what  that  example  is. 


THE  FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 

II 

THE    WALK    UPTOWN 

SHALL  we  New  Yorkers  be  damned  in  the  next 
world  if  we  pause  one  instant  in  our  warfare  with 
municipal  iniquity  and  take  in  the  view?  Is  it 
the  sin  of  Lot's  wife  for  us  ever  to  look  around? 
Surely  it  is  pardonable  sometimes  to  take  a  vaca 
tion  from  reform  and  to  be  frankly  pleased  with 
things  that  are  morally  indifferent.  Corruption 
will  not  get  away.  You  will  find  it  waiting  to  be 
belabored  at  the  same  old  place  when  you  come 
back.  One  ought  not  to  be  bruising  the  serpent 
all  the  time.  The  most  vivacious  snake-bruiser 
sometimes  needs  a  rest.  He  works  the  better  for 
it.  Some  say  New  Yorkers  with  the  moral  aim 
take  too  much  rest.  It  is  not  true.  Their  hearts 
are  always  throbbing  with  political  wrath.  Cor 
ruption  is  their  constant  daily  thought.  They  do 
not  act,  it  is  true,  but  they  think  and  they  talk 
and  they  expose  without  a  pause.  They  never 
give  their  city  a  good  word.  That  is  their  atone 
ment  for  their  ineffectiveness.  That  much  they 
95 


THE  FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 

are  willing  to  do  for  reform's  sake.     They  can 
at  least  abuse. 

There  is  no  queerer  thing  in  the  world  than  a 
good  New  Yorker's  conscience.  How  would  he 
define  his  city?  As  the  cheerfullest,  hopefullest, 
most  vitalizing  big  spot  in  a  hemisphere  or  two, 
which  it  is  in  spite  of  everything  ?  He  would  like 
to,  but  civic  duty  will  not  let  him.  Conscience  re 
quires  that  he  shall  define  it  as  a  long,  narrow  and 
very  corrupt  strip  of  land  provided  with  insuffi 
cient  facilities  for  rapid  transit,  and  once  the 
home  of  the  Tweed  ring ;  bounded  on  the  east  by 
a  river  over  which  a  set  of  rascals  are  planning  to 
build  a  bridge  when  what  is  needed  is  a  tunnel,  and 
on  the  west  by  a  line  of  viciously  administered 
docks ;  on  the  south  lies  New  York  bay  opening 
widely  to  let  in  the  scum  of  foreign  races  and 
Richard  Croker  when  he  returns  from  Europe. 
Conscience  insists  on  accuracy  of  definition  and 
on  infinity  of  talk,  but  on  not  much  more, 
as  is  shown  on  election  day.  A  man  must 
swell  with  rage  over  municipal  corruption 
day  and  night,  but  it  is  quite  proper  foif 
96 


THE  FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 

him  to  dodge  jury  duty  and  to  stay  away  from 
primaries. 

The  moral  indignation  is  a  good  thing,  since 
in  time  it  may  lead  to  action,  but  there  is  no  rea 
son  why  it  should  monopolize  the  soul  and  be 
numb  all  the  faculties.  You  can  fight  evil  with 
out  snubbing  all  the  good  things  in  life,  and 
there  are  some  of  these  good  things  in  New  York. 
Is  it  the  part  of  a  reactionary  to  say  so?  The 
New  York  of  the  better  class  of  newspapers  and 
of  the  conversation  of  its  most  loyal  citizens  is 
about  the  blackest  place  under  the  sun.  The  old 
lady  who  went  through  St.  Louis  with  a  rope  tied 
around  her  and  her  six  children  lest  the  wicked 
should  grab  them  would  not  venture  New  York 
in  an  armored  train.  It  is  not  that  the  press  says 
a  word  too  much  about  our  vices,  but  it  never  says 
anything  about  the  other  things.  Yet  who  has 
ever  been  hurt  by  seeing  more  than  one  side  of  the 
truth  ?  Can't  a  man  work  for  improvement  with 
out  being  lopsided  or  wearing  blinders?  One 
would  think  that  for  a  New  Yorker  to  speak  up 
for  his  city  was  to  pitch  his  tent  toward  Tam- 
97 


THE  FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 

many  or  Sodom,  and  that  the  only  way  to  cure 
evil  was  to  acknowledge  no  good. 

It  does  not  look  much  like  Sodom  as  you  walk 
uptown.  There  are  street  corners  where  the  sin 
of  a  little  cheerfulness  is  almost  pardonable. 
Lexow  and  Mazet  revelations  and  Ramapo  and 
Croker  would  all  roll  off  the  mind  for  the  mo 
ment  if  you  would  let  them.  At  the  risk  of  moral 
laxity  I  say  this  does  no  harm.  It  is  not  likely 
the  devil  could  do  much  in  the  few  minutes  you 
were  off  guard.  It  is  legitimate  sometimes  to 
look  down  a  side  street  straight  to  the  sunset  at 
the  other  end  without  counting  the  number  of 
gin-mills  to  the  block.  Do  not  confound  material 
well-being  with  political  health,  as  Mr.  Godkin 
justly  warned.  But  the  sky  is  not  upholstered 
with  ward  politics,  and  Tammany  Hall  is  not  yet 
a  sign  of  the  zodiac. 


98 


THE  FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 

III 

THE    READING    PUBLIC 

As  THE  autumn  freshet  of  books  comes  down 
upon  us  the  usual  discussion  of  their  superfluity 
promptly  recurs.  One  writer  says  this  century 
will  be  known  as  the  century  that  was  always 
reading  about  itself,  and  taunts  the  present  gen 
eration  with  even  putting  the  letters  of  the  alpha 
bet  in  their  soup.  Another  lectures  the  whole 
tribe  of  publishers  for  giving  the  public  what 
they  want  instead  of  what  in  the  opinion  of  the 
lecturer  they  ought  to  have,  and  somebody  else 
lectures  him  for  not  suggesting  the  proper  rem 
edy.  And  so  it  goes  until  there  is  a  huge  pile  of 
printed  matter  all  to  the  effect  that  printed  mat 
ter  is  in  excess.  The  present  century  may  be 
known  as  the  one  that  became  panic-stricken  at 
the  sight  of  its  own  abundance. 

When  you  come  to  think  of  it,  there  is  no  more 

reason  why  we  should  excite  ourselves  over  the 

superabundance  of  printed  words  than  over  the 

increase  in  the  amount  of  conversation.     Inven- 

99 


THE   FRIGHTENED   MINORITY 

tions  have  enabled  us  to  print  a  part  of  that 
which  used  to  be  spoken  and  which  perished  in 
the  saying.  We  have  always  heard  that  talk  was 
cheap,  and  printed  matter  has  become  almost  as 
inexpensive.  Because  we  read  a  good  deal  of  our 
talk  now  and  throw  it  afterward  in  the  waste 
basket,  it  does  not  follow  that  we  are  intellectu 
ally  going  to  the  dogs.  The  superfluous  book  is 
sometimes  annoying,  but  so  is  the  superfluous 
man.  Every  improvement  in  communication 
makes  the  bore  more  terrible.  Nowadays  he  can 
get  himself  published  as  easily  as  at  one  time 
he  could  get  himself  invited  out  to  dinner.  So 
you  meet  him  more  frequently  in  print.  But  you 
meet  everybody  and  everything  more  frequently 
in  print.  It  is  rather  absurd  to  quarrel  with 
print  on  that  account  or  to  blame  the  publishers 
exclusively.  The  more  food  there  is  in  the  world 
the  more  fools  will  be  fed.  It  is  not  the  fault  of 
the  food  or  the  food  producers. 

When    a    dull   book   meets    with   great   suc 
cess   some  one  always  has   a  fling  at  the  pub 
lishers.       Of    course,    it    would    be    better    if 
100 


THE   FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 


they  maintained  a  high  standard. " '  But  they 
are  no  more  to  be  blamed  than  you  or 
I  for  taking  the  world  as  they  find  it.  And  what 
would  the  dull  man  be  doing  if  he  were  not  por 
ing  over  the  dull  page  ?  Would  he  be  drinking  in 
some  brilliant  table  talk,  or  studying  art,  or  read 
ing  the  Elizabethan  dramatists?  There  is  noth 
ing  in  what  we  know  of  the  dull  man's  daily  life 
to  make  us  think  that  he  has  been  tempted  to  his 
ruin.  Before  dull  books  were  printed  dull  men 
were  probably  duller  yet.  They  may  keep  him 
from  reading  the  average  book,  but  he  would 
then  be  doing  some  other  thing  equally  average. 
Averageness  is  a  quality  we  must  put  up  with. 
And,  after  all,  why  is  a  poor,  tawdry  piece  of 
writing  so  much  worse  than  cheap  chromos  or 
crude,  gaudy  ornaments,  or  the  thousand  and 
one  other  things  that  machinery  multiplies  as 
we  all  travel  up  from  barbarism?  Men  march 
toward  civilization  in  column  formation,  and  by 
the  time  the  van  has  learned  to  admire  the  mas 
ters  the  rear  is  drawing  reluctantly  away  from 
the  totem  pole.  Anywhere  in  the  middle  you  may 
101 


THE  FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 

}<'*     -**. *'$*!!  ?    *  •'       c  '*'«• 

find  a  Veneration -I or  China  pug  dogs  or  an  en 
thusiasm  for  Marie  Corelli — still  an  advance. 
Literary  people  seem  to  think  that  every  time  a 
volume  of  Hall  Caine  is  sold  Shakespeare  is  to 
that  extent  neglected.  It  merely  means  that 
some  semi-savage  has  reached  the  Hall  Cainc 
stage,  and  we  should  wish  him  godspeed  on  his 
way  to  Shakespeare.  It  is  only  when  a  pretended 
Shakespeare  man  lapses  into  Hall-Cainery  that 
one  need  be  excited. 

As  usual  in  these  equinoctial  debates,  the  line 
is  neatly  drawn  between  the  hostile  camps  of  the 
Scornful  Few  and  the  literary  Democrats.  "As 
for  this  vast  new  reading  public,"  says  one  of 
our  leading  novelists,  "it  is  the  vast  old  reading 
public  with  more  means  in  its  pocket  of  satisfy 
ing  its  crude,  childish  taste.  Its  head  is  the  same 
empty  head."  Another,  heart  and  soul  with  the 
party  of  hauteur,  and  a  Coriolanus  to  the  plain 
people  assails  the  "mechanical  reader,"  meaning 
by  that  the  person  "who  makes  it  a  rule  to  read," 
whose  head  no  book  can  fertilize,  who  borrows 
his  opinions  of  literature.  "To  the  mechanical 
108 


THE   FRIGHTENED   MINORITY 

reader,  books  once  read  are  not  like  growing 
things  that  strike  root  and  intertwine  branches, 
but  like  fossils  ticketed  and  put  away  in  the 
drawers  of  a  geologist's  cabinet;  or  rather,  like 
prisoners  condemned  to  life-long  solitary  im 
prisonment.  In  such  a  mind  books  never  talk  to 
each  other." 

On  the  opposing  side  there  is  the  complacency 
of  numbers  and  a  boundless  faith  in  the  average 
American — the  familiar  belief  that  in  the  long 
run  the  people  are  just  about  right.  "Healthy 
optimism,"  I  believe,  is  the  technical  term — land 
of  promise  and  the  goose  hangs  high,  warm 
hearts  and  paper  collars,  beautiful  thoughts  in 
frowsy  heads,  and  what  is  best  is  also  simplest, 
and  "you  can't  fool  the  people  all  the  time,"  and 
the  throbbing  pulse  of  common  humanity, 
and  the  sterling  worth  of  the  man  in  the 
street,  and  the  divine  right  of  the  thing  that 
gets  the  votes,  for  whatever  is  greatest 
gets  them.  It  seems  as  if  never  a  day  had 
passed  without  a  whirl  of  these  rousing  senti 
ments. 

103 


THE   FRIGHTENED   MINORITY} 

Now,  I  too  once  fought  (as  a  private  of 
course)  on  the  side  of  the  Scornful  and  har 
pooned  the  public  with  all  my  might,  but  some 
how  or  other  the  old  hippopotamus  never  felt  it. 
I  too  not  doubting  that  I  was  a  first  cabin  pas 
senger  stood  proudly  among  the  few  and  let  drive 
at  mechanical  readers  and  writers  and  critics  and 
multitudes  and  blamed  everybody  for  not  being 
like  somebody,  and  somebody  for  not  being  like 
me,  and  thought  mediocrity  would  know  itself 
from  my  description  and  feel  ashamed  and  per 
haps  die,  and  was  particularly  devastating 
among  fools  and  could  have  wept  when  they  did 
not  know  it  and  took  me  for  one  of  themselves. 
But  the  pleasure  of  it  passes  and  there  is  never 
any  profit  in  it  to  anybody.  Of  course  people 
are  a  little  exasperating  when  they  talk  about 
books — which  seem  to  go  through  the  mind  for 
the  most  part  like  beans  through  a  tube — and  so 
uniform  are  they  and  so  gregarious,  forty  feed 
ing  as  one,  that  it  seems  as  if  Nature  turned  out 
men's  souls  as  from  a  waffle-iron.  And  it  is  the 
more  disturbing  because  we  know  Nature  does 
104 


THE  FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 

nothing  of  the  sort  but  gives  them  personal 
preferences  in  clothes  and  food  and  cigars.  Each 
swears  in  different  language  at  his  toothache  and 
takes  a  different  woman  for  his  wife.  Pinch  a 
member  of  the  reading  public  and  you  will 
find  that  he  is  real.  But  his  personal  taste 
in  books  is  harder  to  get  at  than  his  secret 
vices. 

But  why  need  one  be  so  bitter  about  it?  Be 
cause  a  reader  is  inarticulate  and  cannot  prove 
that  green  things  with  twining  branches  grow 
in  his  fertilized  head,  it  does  not  follow  that  he 
is  mechanical.  And  suppose  he  is  mechanical 
and  bears  the  needless  burden  of  other  people's 
tastes  and  potters  away  at  self-improvement 
when  he  has  nothing  to  improve,  there  is  nothing 
in  it  so  very  dreadful.  Literary  people  are  for 
ever  judging  the  quality  of  the  mind  by  the  turn 
of  expression.  Such  sniffs  at  the  banal  remark 
and  the  empty  sentence,  such  holy  wrath  at  un 
productive  reading;  the  minute  a  poor  wretch 
swallows  an  epic  they  look  at  his  tongue  for  a 
sign.  They  expect  things  of  people  as  readers 
105 


THE  FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 

that  they  do  not  expect  of  them  as  men.  To 
most  men  the  platitude  is  as  natural  as  the  bark 
to  a  dog,  and  if  feeling  were  measured  by  elo 
quence  there  would  be  no  family  ties.  The  dull 
man  is  not  only  entitled  to  his  dull  book  but  is 
privileged  to  talk  of  masterpieces  in  his  dull  way, 
and  there  is'no  more  reason  for  railing  at  him  in 
his  relation  to  books  than  in  his  relation  to  his 
government,  and  his  God,  and  his  green  grocer, 
and  his  friends,  whom  perhaps  he  bores  most 
frightfully,  and  who  therefore  have  a  greater 
grievance  than  true  literature  can  complain  of. 
Taking  people  as  they  are,  considering  whom 
they  marry,  and  what  they  eat  and  how  they  live 
and  what  they  say  and  how  they  say  it,  we  must 
in  common  sense  conclude  that  their  literary  taste 
is  the  least  thing  that  is  the  matter  with  them. 
But  literary-mindedness  sees  only  the  one  thing ; 
it  would  reduce  the  universe  to  a  coterie,  control 
the  birthrate  of  this  sphere  and  breed  only 
Browning-readers.  The  question  is  not  literary 
but  biological.  It  is  not  a  humane  view  of  us 
ex-barbarians.  Give  us  time,  and  meanwhile 
106 


THE  FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 

thank  Heaven  that  for  the  present  we  are  at 
least  tailless. 

It  is  one  side  of  a  larger  problem,  which  is 
rather  complex.  Another  part  of  it  is  preying 
on  the  vitals  of  the  political  economists,  and  over 
still  another  an  enthusiastic  group  of  sociolog 
ists  are  rapidly  growing  mad.  If  we  could  tell 
what  the  millions  ought  to  have  we  should  be  in 
a  fair  way  to  settle  the  world's  future  offhand. 
Nor  is  there  any  hope  of  a  general  reaction.  The 
society  of  the  future  is  sure  to  be  more  tempted 
and  embarrassed  by  the  multude  of  its  opportun 
ities  than  we  are  now. 

Critics  seem  often  ill  at  ease  in  the  bad  com 
pany  of  this  every-day  world.  They  find  no 
pleasure  in  what  is  merely  crude  and  laughable 
and  have  only  harsh  words  for  a  stage  of  develop 
ment.  You  might  as  well  lampoon  a  hemisphere. 
They  do  not  sneer  at  children  with  their  primers, 
but  for  the  average  man  with  the  average  book 
they  have  no  mercy.  Their  real  grievance  is 
with  the  number  of  people  there  are  in  the  world, 
but  for  my  part  I  believe  that  were  it  not  for  the 
107 


THE  FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 

presence  of  the  unwashed  and  the  half -educated, 
the  formless,  queer  and  incomplete,  the  un 
reasonable  and  absurd,  the  infinite  shapes  of  the 
delightful  human  tadpole,  the  horizon  would  not 
wear  so  broad  a  grin. 


108 


THE  FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 

IV 

REFORMERS   AND    BROOMSTICKS 

A  FEW  years  ago  a  number  of  our  protectors  in 
the  press  were  greatly  alarmed  by  reports  of 
brutal  hazing  at  West  Point.  Cadets  had  been 
made  to  stand  upon  their  heads,  sing  songs,  ride 
on  broomsticks,  and  eat  tabasco  sauce.  Congress 
appointed  a  committee  of  inquiry,  and  finding 
the  reports  in  part  true  very  properly  took  steps 
to  improve  the  discipline,  which  happy  consum 
mation  would  in  all  likelihood  have  come  about 
had  our  moral  guardians  scared  us  less.  For 
after  all  nothing  very  horrible  was  disclosed  by 
the  inquiry.  If  those  cadets  deserve  pity,  we  do, 
too.  Most  of  us  have  eaten  worse  things  than 
tabasco  sauce.  There  was,  for  example,  a  cer 
tain  compound  of  vinegar  and  wheel  grease  which 
— but  that  is  a  fraternal  secret.  Though  not 
trained  for  warriors,  we,  too,  have  eaten  soap. 
Some  of  us  may  not  have  stood  on  our  heads  in 
bath  tubs — bath  tubs  are  not  always  convenient 
at  the  time — but  we  know  from  experience  of  the 
109 


THE  FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 

higher  education  that  pretty  effective  things  can 
be  done  with  a  pump.  And  there  was  a  long, 
hard  board  in  the  hands  of  a  strong  man — hard 
est  board,  strongest  man  we  have  ever  known — 
which  must  have  been  as  well  adapted  to  its  pur 
pose  as  anything  they  had  at  West  Point. 
Brutal?  We  thought  so  then,  decidedly.  "In 
human  man,  curse  on  thy  barbarous  art,  and 
blasted  be  thy  murder-aiming  eye."  That  was 
the  thought  that  struck  us  when  the  board  did. 
It  was  not  the  way  young  Emerson  was  treated. 
The  other  boys  seemed  to  know  by  instinct  that 
he  was  going  to  be  a  great  thinker  when  he  grew 
up.  Of  heroes,  statesmen  and  philosophers  there 
are  a  plenty  who  never  passed  through  any  such 
ordeal  in  youth.  It  was  clear  to  us  even  then 
that  man  may  be  great  without  it.  On  the  other 
hand,  there  have  been  many  cases  of  serious  and 
lasting  damage  done  to  beings  of  a  fine  but 
fragile  mould.  Our  tormentors,  therefore,  ran 
a  great  risk.  In  banging  us  around  they  might 
have  thumped  out  a  strain  of  real  poetry  in  us 
or  spoiled  us  for  the  ambassadorship  at  St.  James. 
110 


THE  FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 

But  did  they?  Ask  our  guardian  angels.  We 
only  know — and  there  are  some  millions  of  us 
survivors — that  if  this  blessed  land  has  lost  a  few 
frail  poets  in  the  process,  it  has  been  saved  from 
a  far  greater  number  of  prigs.  Few  men  who 
have  been  through  it  will  tell  you  it  is  altogether 
bad. 

This  does  not  argue  any  indifference  toward 
the  extreme  forms  of  hazing.  Nor  does  any 
rational  veteran  feel  that  all  the  hardships  of  his 
own  experience  are  strictly  necessary  to  those 
who  come  later  to  the  test.  You  can  teach  man 
ners  without  taking  the  skin  off.  To  be  keel 
hauled  like  the  young  man  in  Snarleyow  is  not 
the  only  cure  for  conceit.  But  the  standard  in 
the  matter  is  not  an  old  man's  standard.  Nor 
is  it  a  standard  of  little  French  boys  with  their 
governesses,  or  of  flabby,  contemplative  Ger 
man  youths.  We  fogies  who  write  for  the  papers 
may  as  well  remember  that.  Each  generation  of 
Anglo-Saxons  is  in  an  absurd  hurry  to  stretch 
itself  on  the  rack  of  this  tough  world.  They  must 
be  at  self-government  from  the  very  start.  They 
111 


THE  FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 

constitute  vigilance  committees  on  the  frontiers 
of  life  to  apply  lynch  law  to  vices  in  the  germ. 
It  is  not  thorough,  for  see  what  slips  through; 
and  it  is  not  just  in  a  nice,  respectable  sense,  but 
it  is  not  altogether  bad  for  the  race,  and  prob 
ably  saves  more  souls  than  it  damns. 

And  if  it  is  sometimes  carried  to  excess  it  is 
still  oftener  withheld  by  lack  of  early  advantages 
from  the  people  who  need  it  most — the  men  who 
cannot  take  a  joke,  who  must  be  shielded  from 
reality  and  double-barred  against  plain  speech. 
To  criticize  is  to  wound;  to  laugh  is  to  make 
enemies  for  life.  So  you  must  tiptoe  as  in  a 
sick  room  lest  some  small  vanity  may  take  alarm. 
Meeting  them  now,  we  are  too  late.  Middle  age 
is  the  conventional  garden  where  the  little  pom 
posities  are  allowed  to  bloom.  Youth  is  the  time 
for  weeding  out  the  little  pomposities  so  that  they 
will  not  grow  again.  Caught  then  and  badgered 
and  guyed  and  "roasted,"  something  might  have 
been  done,  and  with  little  risk  of  a  broken  spirit, 
for  most  of  us  start  with  a  large  enough  stock 
of  egotism  to  last  through  the  siege.  The 
112 


THE   FRIGHTENED   MINORITY 

time  comes  soon  enough  when  people  have  to 
keep  their  hands  off  and  sneer  behind  our  backs. 
There  should  be  a  season  consecrated  to  the  frank 
and  primitive  method.  Otherwise  we  might  grow 
up  to  scratch  and  bite  like  French  deputies  or 
pull  hair  like  respectable  members  of  the  Aus 
trian  reichstag  in  their  middle  age. 

It  seems  that  the  committee  did  not  take  all 
the  goings  on  at  West  Point  with  equal  serious 
ness,  as  the  newspapers  did.  The  report  admits 
that  "Many  of  the  things  done  by  the  upper 
classmen  were  boyish  pranks."  At  the  same  time, 
in  view  of  the  consternation  this  might  cause  our 
nursery  governesses,  it  went  on  to  say  that  even 
these  boyish  pranks  "are  frequently  conducted 
in  such  a  way  as  to  outrage  the  noblest  feelings 
of  the  human  heart,"  and  cited  as  an  instance  the 
fact  that  the  son  of  a  distinguished  soldier  had 
been  compelled  to  ride  a  broomstick  up  and  down 
the  company  street.  It  was  determined  to  pre 
vent  the  repetition  of  these  indignities. 

So  far  so  good ;  but  the  spirit  that  prompted 
the  broomstick  atrocity  is  likely  to  persist,  and 
118 


THE   FRIGHTENED   MINORITY 

without  laying  a  hand  on  this  young  gentleman 
they  might  have  made  him  just  as  miserable. 
That  is  where  the  power  of  the  state  breaks 
down.  Nothing  can  save  our  self-esteem  from  a 
coat  of  tar  and  feathers,  and  it  gets  it  frequently. 
Noble  feelings  have  been  outraged  even  in  Con 
gress.  One  legislator  has  been  known  to  imply 
that  another  did  not  speak  the  truth.  Yet  a  be 
lief  that  he  is  not  a  liar  is  one  of  the  noblest  feel 
ings  in  the  breast  of  a  Congressman.  He  would 
as  lief  ride  a  broomstick  as  be  robbed  of  it.  As 
a  matter  of  fact,  the  conditions  of  this  boisterous 
planet  are  hopelessly  unfit  for  any  soul  that  could 
not  stand  the  equivalent  of  that  broomstick  test 
in  the  days  of  his  lusty  youth.  If  Congress  could 
only  hedge  him  in  completely,  what  a  blessed 
little  bijou  of  a  man  he  would  grow  up  to  be. 

But  Congress  will  not  hedge  him  in.  Both  the 
committee  and  the  cadets  acted  with  good  sense 
and  brought  the  affair  to  a  reasonable  ending. 
The  moral  of  it  has  nothing  to  do  with  either  of 
these  but  with  us  outsiders.  How  we  take  on 
about  such  matters,  we  the  professional  croakers, 
114 


THE   FRIGHTENED   MINORITY 

who  have  but  one  note  in  our  register,  the  same 
old  solemn  bull-frog  note  for  everything  that 
happens.  When  things  are  really  very  bad  what 
shall  we  have  to  say  to  them? 

Our  language  is  rich  enough  in  disapproving 
adjectives,  and  it  is  a  pity  to  use  the  same  set  for 
crimes  and  trifles.  Yet  in  the  apoplexy  of  our 
discontent  we  waste  the  fiercest  of  them  on  some 
assassin  with  a  crooked  pin  or  tyrant  with  a 
broomstick.  A  case  for  discipline;  young  men 
had  broken  the  rules  of  an  institution  and  fought 
and  badgered  one  another  and  immediately  there 
arose  a  chorus  of  Did  you  evers,  and  a  wagging 
of  fungus  heads  all  over  the  country.  A  small 
but  very  serious  group  argued  in  favor  of  it, 
holding  that  it  was  part  of  a  scientific  plan  for 
the  making  of  officers  and  gentlemen.  Precisely 
that  degree  of  scuffling  and  violation  of  rules  was 
necessary  to  develop  true  courage.  The  rest  of 
us  saw  in  it  the  impending  smash-up  of  young 
manhood,  and  for  weeks  there  was  a  pest  of  great 
moral  owls,  worse  than  a  plague  of  Egypt. 

Whether  or  not  a  moral  can  be  drawn  depends 
115 


THE  FRIGHTENED  MINORITY 

wholly  on  the  drawer.  It  is  like  the  rabbit  in  the 
juggler's  hat.  Smoking  hot  shapes  from  Tar 
tarus  were  ramping  about  this  country  wherever 
we  looked.  That  West  Point  affair  was  not,  as 
you  might  think,  a  mere  instance  of  stupid  horse 
play,  calling,  perhaps,  for  the  prompt  expulsion 
of  the  offenders.  It  was  a  sign  of  the  times,  and 
a  devil's  footprint,  and  it  showed  how  the  curse 
of  an  unrighteous  federal  policy  has  tainted 
everything.  Corrupt  the  morality  at  the  centre, 
and  this  is  what  you  get.  Pollute  the  flag  in  the 
Philippines,  and  our  sons  shall  constrain  their 
schoolmates  to  ride  the  contumelious  broomstick. 
And  the  end  of  it  was  just  what  it  would  have 
been  if  we  had  not  lost  a  single  night's  sleep. 
Such  are  the  blessings  of  a  tutelary  and  meticu 
lous  press.  But  everything  has  its  sermon,  and 
the  text  of  this  is  to  be  found  not  in  the  doings 
of  the  young,  but  in  the  comments  of  their  elders. 
It  is,  as  I  take  it,  that  if  there  is  one  thing 
worse  than  the  savagery  of  youth,  it  is  the 
pompous  rigidity  of  middle  age  as  exhibited  in 
this  discussion. 

116 


THE   FRIGHTENED   MINORITY 

But  is  it  not  what  the  people  want,  and  might 
they  not  misunderstand  any  other  course?  The 
chances  are  that  they  would  endure  more  common 
sense  than  we  dare  to  give  them.  After  all  it  is 
not  a  lachrymose  people,  whatever  you  may  say. 
You  can  tell  that  from  their  faces  and  from  the 
air  they  breathe.  A  fairly  cheerful  race,  and 
not  without  a  certain  sense  of  a  modus  in  rebus, 
it  does  not  require  the  moral  of  every  small  event 
to  be  hammered  in  with  a  pile-driver.  One  set 
of  words  for  the  ruin  of  the  state,  another  for 
the  rudeness  of  our  children — that  is  what  they 
expect  from  us,  and  even  though  we  should 
be  misunderstood  we  shall  not  burn  for  it. 


117 


PART  IV 

ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAY 
GOER 


ON   SEEING   TEN    BAD    PLAYS 

HAD  I  an  artist's  soul  I  should  be  somewhat 
soured  by  what  I  have  gone  through.  As  it  is, 
I  have  fought  down  all  bitterness  of  heart  by  the 
aid  of  a  little  philosophy.  A  man  needs  philos 
ophy  more  for  the  commonplaces  of  this  world 
than  he  does  for  its  miseries,  ennui  being  a  stead 
ier  foe  than  pain.  I  therefore  offer  my  phi 
losophy  of  the  commonplace  in  the  American 
drama  and  literature.  It  is  not  deep,  but  it  is  at 
least  bland,  and  it  may  help  to  allay  irritation 
in  certain  moods.  There  is  enough  of  polished 
sarcasm,  and  of  cynicism  there  is  already  too 
118 


ADVENTURES    OF    A   PLAYGOER 

much.     What  we  need  is  something  that  will  aid 
us  in  matters  of  routine. 

In  the  first  place  I  swear  by  all  that  is  holiest 
in  democracy — by  the  boiled  onions  of  the  plain 
people,  by  their  even  plainer  wives,  by  the  fire 
sides  of  Tom,  Dick  and  Harry,  by  the  sanctity 
of  the  bigger  figure,  by  the  sacred  whoops  of  the 
majority — that  the  usual  man  is  not  to  blame  for 
wanting  the  usual  thing.  Hallcainery  has  its 
place  in  the  world.  Indeed,  I  believe  it  alto 
gether  healthy,  hopeful,  and  respectable,  and  if  I 
thought  otherwise  I  should  lose  all  faith  in  repre 
sentative  institutions.  There  are  a  few  who  never 
weary  of  saying  spiteful  things  about  literary 
mediocrity.  They  have  no  patience  with  devel 
opment  or  kindliness  for  beginnings ;  they  would 
condemn  every  tadpole  as  a  sort  of  apostate  frog. 
Why  are  they  so  petulant  with  majorities?  Hu 
manity  would  pine  away  on  masterpieces ;  yet 
many  would  have  you  think  that  the  journey 
from  savagery  to  high  art  must  be  made  in  total 
silence,  with  nothing  to  read  on  the  way.  Our 
plays  are  relatively  good,  being  no  further  below 
119 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

the  drama  than  they  are  above  tomtoms  and  hu 
man  sacrifice.  Blessed  is  vulgar  "reading-mat 
ter,"  for  without  it  people  might  eat  one  another. 
No  race  ever  sinks  from  Hallcainery  into  barbar 
ism;  it  rises  from  barbarism  to  Hallcainery, 
whence  in  time  it  may  emerge. 

And  who  shall  say  that  our  plays  are  not  as 
good  as  our  politics,  or  our  writers  as  our  Sen 
ators?  Do  we  expect  brilliancy  in  our  states 
men?  We  are  thankful  enough  in  this  country 
for  a  good  candidate,  let  who  will  be  clever.  If 
a  large  city  can,  after  intense  intellectual  ef 
forts,  choose  for  its  mayor  a  man  who  merely  will 
not  steal  from  it,  we  consider  it  a  triumph  of  the 
suffrage.  So  moderate  are  our  expectations  in 
this  field  that  if  ordinary  intelligence  be  super- 
added,  it  seems  a  piece  of  luck.  We  are  over 
joyed  at  any  sign  that  the  nation's  choice  is  up 
to  the  nation's  average ;  and  time  and  again  you 
hear  a  thing  called  statesmanlike,  which  in  pri 
vate  life  would  be  just  on  the  safe  side  of  sanity. 
Mr.  McKinley's  refusal  of  a  third  term  was  re 
garded  as  a  masterstroke  of  wisdom,  and  we  have 
120 


ADVENTURES    OF    A   PLAYGOER 

all  read  praises  of  Mr.  Roosevelt's  achievements 
which  are  deserved  as  well  by  anybody  we  ever 
knew.  Nobody  praises  us  when  we  come  home 
sober  of  an  evening,  or  speak  a  good  average  sen 
tence,  or  draw  a  good  average  breath ;  and  sturdy 
virtues  that  keep  us  out  of  the  police  court  for 
weeks  at  a  time  are  not  even  mentioned  by  the 
family.  But  by  these  negative  signs  you  can 
often  tell  a  statesman,  for  politics  is  a  place  of 
humble  hopes  and  strangely  modest  requirements, 
where  all  are  good  who  are  not  criminal  and  all 
are  wise  who  are  not  ridiculously  otherwise.  Any 
one  who  is  used  to  the  accidents  of  majorities 
should  acquire  this  habit  of  mind.  But  the  liter 
ary  and  artistic  people  persist  in  the  most  exorbi 
tant  demands  at  a  point  where  the  least  should 
be  logically  expected,  that  is,  the  tastes  of  a 
crowd.  And  if  the  majority  is  against  them, 
they  scold  it  and  the  thing  it  chooses,  and  having 
lost  their  tempers  and  tired  their  friends,  and 
troubled  a  number  of  honest  creatures  who  have 
not  the  least  idea  what  it  is  all  about,  they  feel 
that  they  have  been  doing  wonders  for  what  they 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

call  artistic  standards.  Right  enough  views,  but 
the  wrong  occasion.  We  expect  only  peace  in  a 
cable  car;  for  ectasies  we  must  look  somewhere 
else. 

If  high  art  deserves  its  ecstasies,  low  art  de 
serves  its  consolations ;  and  if  there  is  any  way  of 
making  better  terms  with  humdrum  and  escaping 
the  spasms  of  reform,  it  is  our  plain  business  to 
find  it.  St.  Paul  said,  keep  the  body  under.  I 
say  unto  you,  keep  the  mind  under  on  seeing 
American  plays.  Be  "contentit  wi'  little  and 
canty  wi'  mair;"  smile  though  the  smile  looks 
sometimes  like  a  rictus ;  get  the  point  of  view  of 
the  original  erect  ape-man  (pithecanthropus 
erectus)  ;  and  if  at  any  time  you  are  afflicted  by 
a  play  that  is  particularly  bad  and  popular,  con 
sider  the  growth  of  our  manufactures  and  sing 
"My  Country,  'Tis  of  Thee."  To  express  one's 
own  tastes  is  reasonable,  but  to  worry  too  much 
over  other  people's  leads  to  a  useless  violence. 
Some  wish  to  murder  Hall  Caine.  I  believe  it 
would  be  inexpedient  to  do  so,  and  possibly 
wrong.  I  believe  Mr.  Clyde  Fitch  as  truly  repre- 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

sents  New  York  as  Senator  Peffer  did  Kansas  or 
Mr.  Bryan  the  West ;  and  the  more  I  see  of 
audiences  the  surer  I  am  that  to  massacre  is  the 
only  way  to  reform. 

Unwilling  to  be  dependent  longer  on  the 
bounty  of  her  rich  guardian  the  high-spirited 
ingenue  in  light  blue  leaves  her  luxurious  home 
to  teach  school  in  a  distant  village.  Being  very 
much  of  a  lady  she  is  obliged  to  walk  as  if  the 
stage  floor  were  red  hot,  and  to  speak  in  a  high 
trilling  voice  with  a  foreign  accent — a  course 
that  instantly  wins  for  her  the  love  of  every  one 
she  meets.  But  the  guardian  comes  to  urge  her 
to  return  to  what,  as  a  gentleman  of  wealth  and 
refinement,  he  is  obliged  to  call  "me  home."  They 
are  talking  alone,  but  as  soon  as  she  begins  to  ex 
plain  that  self-respect  will  not  permit  her  to  re 
main  with  him,  now  that  she  knows  the  fortune  is 
not  really  hers,  the  violins  play  softly  and  from 
every  door  and  alley  the  villagers  come  pouring 
in.  A  sentimental  conversation  between  people 
they  barely  know  will  draw  villagers  to  the  spot 
for  miles  around.  So  when  the  heroine  and  her 


ADVENTURES    OF    A   PLAYGOER 

guardian  are  at  their  saddest  everybody  is  punc 
tually  in  place.  It  is  all  very  exasperating,  and 
the  superior  person,  who  has  no  business  to  be 
there,  will  ask  you  if  it  is  Art.  It  is  not  Art,  but 
the  stout  lady  in  the  seat  behind  you  is  nearly 
bursting  with  sobs,  and  a  large  number  of  pocket 
handkerchiefs  are  fluttering  in  the  aisles.  With 
this  particular  audience  Art  could  do  nothing  at 
all.  Then  comes  humor  in  its  more  awful  forms. 
Thrice-explained  humor,  with  long  waits  for  the 
effects;  humor  accompanied  by  the  hilarious 
roars  of  the  man  who  made  it.  And  for  half  an 
hour  there  is  as  genuine  enjoyment  as  you  ever 
saw,  and  at  the  very  heaviest  of  horse-plays  the 
stout  lady  behind  you  says,  "Isn't  that  rich?" 
Elevate  the  stage?  Perhaps  you  can,  but  it  will 
be  a  good  many  generations  before  those  people 
will  be  ready  for  it.  A  quarter  of  an  inch  eleva 
tion  would  spoil  the  whole  thing  for  them. 

There  is  plenty  of  room  for  a  good  theatre, 
but  there  is  no  use  in  hoping  that  it  will  draw 
away  the  crowds  from  the  class  of  plays  that  are 
now  successful.  These  plays  will  continue,  or 


'ADVENTURES    OF   A   PLAYGOER 

others  just  as  bad.  They  are  wonderfully 
adapted  to  the  people  who  go  to  see  them,  and  as 
time  goes  on  this  element  of  the  population  is 
bound  to  increase.  There  are  more  below  than 
above  them.  It  is  absurd  for  the  superior  per 
son  to  ask  them  if  it  is  Art.  He  would  not  take 
on  like  that  about  a  ball  game  or  a  merry-go- 
round.  And  at  a  country  fair  or  sociable  or 
"sugar  eat"  he  would  not  be  so  savage  about  bad 
taste.  But  a  simple,  hearty  New  York  audience 
abandoning  itself  to  the  innocent,  if  rude,  pleas 
ures  of  the  average  play  has  no  mercy  from  him 
for  the  amazing  reason  that  it  is  not  Art.  As  if 
simplicity  required  a  background  of  hen  roosts 
and  apple  orchards  and  all  primitive  men  tucked 
their  trousers  in  their  boots.  He  is  a  child  of 
nature,  the  New  York  playgoer,  even  if  he  is  not 
picturesque,  and  he  has  an  honest  and  wholesome 
regard  for  whatever  is  atrocious  in  art.  Put  him 
on  the  diet  of  the  superior  person  and  he  would 
soon  starve. 

There  must  be  bad  plays.    You  cannot  civilize 
the  whole  crowd  of  us  at  once,  and  those  hideous 
125 


ADVENTURES   OF   A   PLAYGOER 

early  stages  of  artistic  appreciation  cannot  be 
skipped.  There  is  much  cheerless  writing  on  a 
subject  that  from  certain  points  of  view  is  almost 
cheerful.  Compare  the  worst  successful  New 
York  play  with  a  war  dance  or  with  certain  Zulu 
sports.  Things  have  greatly  improved.  How 
did  the  same  class  use  to  amuse  themselves?  As 
to  moral  lessons,  the  poorest  of  successful  plays 
is  remarkably  vigorous  and  insistent.  No  sign  of 
decay  there.  In  fact,  the  worse  the  art  the  more 
blatant  the  moral.  No  New  York  playgoer  is 
likely  to  forget  for  one  moment  that  virtue  is  an 
admirable  thing.  Is  it  not  cheerful  to  think  of 
the  big  audiences  going  night  after  night  to 
have  the  same  elementary  moral  lessons  pounded 
in?  You  want  your  moral  lesson  served  artistic 
ally  or  you  will  not  take  it  at  all.  Perhaps  you 
would  as  lief  see  the  wicked  triumph  for  a 
change.  But  these  people  are  content  with  vir 
tue  in  the  raw.  They  are  not  after  new  ideas, 
but  want  some  one  to  say  a  good  word  for  those 
they  have  already.  On  no  account  must  you 
meddle  with  their  minds. 
126 


ADVENTURES    OF    A   PLAYGOER 

The  moral  of  all  this  is  that  one  ought  to  try 
and  see  the  bright  side  of  the  situation,  if  such 
a  thing  is  to  be  found,  and  suppress  those  mur 
derous  feelings  toward  what  after  all  is  a  worthy 
class  of  citizens  and  good  building  material  for 
the  state.  In  spite  of  artistic  merit  and  intelli 
gence  good  plays  may  succeed,  and  some  day 
the  experiment  will  be  tried  on  a  large  scale ;  but 
in  the  meanwhile  all  the  philosophy  that  you  can 
summon  and  patience  with  those  who  like  the 
plays  they  have.  The  undiscriminating  benig 
nity  of  audiences  almost  drives  you  mad.  Why  do 
they  not  rise  from  their  places  and  burn  and 
slay?  How  easy  to  lynch  the  manager,  if  they 
only  knew.  But  they  are  having  a  good  time  for 
all  your  splutter  about  Art,  and  if  you  can  see 
any  signs  of  demoralization  in  their  pleasant 
moon  faces  you  are  a  cynic  at  heart.  For  what 
ever  our  stage  is,  it  supplies  the  unseasoned  food 
that  is  relished  in  the  lusty  infancy  of  Art. 


127 


ADVENTURES   OF   A   PLAYGOER 

II 

THE    SPAN    OF    THE    STAGE 

AGES  ago  when  we  were  all  young  and  went  to 
evening  parties,  there  was  always,  it  will  be  re 
called,  at  least  one  blase  guest  who  entered  with 
a  look  of  pain  and  remained  with  conscious  cyni 
cism.  So  the  world  is  still  at  it,  he  seemed  to 
say,  as  if  from  centuries  of  experience  (most 
of  it  dark),  looking  more  bored  than  mortal  man 
could  ever  feel — as  bored  perhaps  as  Satan  might 
be  at  an  afternoon  tea  with  cherubs.  But  he 
went  home  no  earlier  than  any  one  else  and  had 
you  at  any  time  felt  his  pulse  you  would  have 
found  it  pumping  away  as  cheerfully  as  other 
people's.  It  was  only  that  he  would  not  confess 
his  indefensible  emotions.  It  is  the  same  way 
with  some  of  us  playgoers.  We  profess  to  enjoy 
only  as  we  judge,  but  night  after  night  we  can 
fold  up  our  judgment  like  an  opera  hat  and  con 
tentedly  sit  with  it  under  the  seat,  though  we 
damn  the  play  with  it  afterwards.  It  is  just 
this  lenient  play-going  mood  that  makes  stage 
128 


ADVENTURES  OF  A  PLAYGOER 

criticism  seem  unreal.  The  intellect  is  detach 
able.  Sometimes  you  are  happier  if  you  keep 
it  on ;  sometimes  you  feel  better  without  it ;  at  a 
certain  kind  of  conventional  play  it  is  simply 
poisonous. 

I  have  been  reading  some  inappropriately  in 
telligent  remarks  on  a  simple  melodrama  of  In 
dian  fights  and  primitive  valor,  wherein  the  hero 
is  a  Western  scout,  a  noble,  athletic  creature,  a 
child  of  nature  and  of  the  Leatherstocking  Tales, 
who  is  full  of  the  moon  and  stars  and  the  Great 
Spirit,  and  does  not  know  how  heroic  he  is  when 
he  saves  a  regiment  at  the  risk  of  his  life.  The 
critic  says  the  character  is  not  life-like,  as  if  it 
mattered,  and  adds  that  he  is  beneath  the  stand 
ard  of  Broadway,  as  if  there  were  one.  This  hero 
belongs  to  the  juvenilia  of  our  stage,  and  if  you 
kill  him  you  will  find  yourself  embarked  on  a 
career  of  slaughter.  There  have  been  a  dozen 
like  him  this  year  and  last.  There  is  no  reason 
why  criticism  should  straighten  itself  up  with 
this  sudden  dignity  and  let  the  other  eleven  go 
through.  Classify  him  and  let  him  alone;  enjoy 
129 


ADVENTURES    OF    A   PLAYGOER 

the  moment  if  you  can ;  forget  your  age  and  edu 
cation  and  everything  else ;  feel  on  the  top  of 
your  bald  head  for  sunny  curls,  and  try  and  won 
der  how  the  play  will  turn  out.  Will  the  Indians 
get  him  ?  It  may  be  his  gun  will  go  off  and  shoot 
the  orchestra.  There  is  always  something  to 
wonder  at.  Where  there's  a  will,  there's  a  way. 
A  play  may  be  seen  with  two  standards :  The 
standard  of  what  you  have  previously  seen  or 
read  or  studied,  and  the  standard  of  what  you 
would  have  been  doing  if  you  had  stayed  at  home 
that  evening.  The  average  play  does  not  com 
pete  with  Shakespeare  but  with  the  evening 
papers  or  a  game  of  cards  or  the  bosom  of  the 
average  family. 

Despise  not  the  raw  virtue,  black  vice  and 
scalping  knives  of  casual  melodrama  unless  you 
are  ready  to  despise  the  society  hodge-podge  and 
the  merely  spectacular  historical  play.  The 
common  defect  is  the  unrealized  men  and  women. 
We  reverse  the  practice  of  the  Elizabethans  and 
label  characters  instead  of  scenery.  They  asked 
their  audience  to  believe  that  this  was  a  wall  and 
130 


ADVENTUPES    OF    A   PLAYGOER 

that  a  gate-post.  We  do  the  wall  and 
post  to  the  life,  but  say,  will  you  please  believe 
that  these  jumping- jacks  are  human  beings. 
Yet  our  audience  is  well  trained,  ready  to  take 
the  will  for  the  deed,  and  in  no  hurry  to  argue 
itself  out  of  a  place  to  spend  its  evenings.  If 
you  think  coolly  of  the  playwright's  work,  you 
will  turn  the  stage  into  a  solitude.  In  a  month 
of  play  going  I  found  only  one  play  that  met  the 
tests  of  afterthought,  but  there  were  very  few 
that  did  not  suffice  for  the  moment. 

We  think  of  the  theatre  as  a  great,  grinding 
machine  for  expressing  the  obvious,  a  show-place 
for  large  adventures  of  body  and  soul,  unsuited 
as  a  bass-drum  to  lighter  arguments.  Some  say 
the  theatre  can  take  nothing  up  till  the  other 
arts  are  through  with  it.  Then  a  play  like  Old 
Heidelberg  comes  along  and  succeeds  where 
many  poets  fail  through  sheer  clumsiness.  It  is 
by  no  means  a  great  play,  and  it  deals  with  the 
lightest  of  themes.  An  unheroic  young  prince 
whom  the  restraints  of  a  petty  court  hardly  per 
mit  to  draw  a  natural  breath,  suddenly  finds  him- 
131 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

self  free  to  lead  his  own  life  at  the  university. 
For  the  first  time  he  meets  people  on  a  common 
footing  and  can  be  foolish  and  spontaneous  and 
undignified  and  young,  and  make  a  noise  and 
fall  genuinely  in  love  with  his  landlord's  pretty 
daughter.  So  he  comes  to  life  and  after  his  first 
bewilderment  does  all  these  things  with  a  zest  that 
is  good  to  see  and  resolves  to  keep  on  doing  them 
f  orevermore,  but  in  the  midst  of  it  all  he  is  sum 
moned  back  to  the  court  to  assume  the  regency. 
Being  as  I  have  said  an  utterly  unheroic  person, 
he  obeys,  and  takes  leave  of  his  sweetheart  and 
his  friends  in  a  way  that  makes  you  pity  all  com 
monplace  human  princes.  Later  he  revisits  the 
university  thinking  to  find  everything  the  same, 
but  he  has  changed  and  so  have  the  students. 
Somehow  no  one  can  unbend  and  the  meeting  is 
absurdly  ceremonious,  empty  and  forlorn.  Then 
the  final  parting  with  his  sweetheart,  for  his  mar 
riage,  of  course,  is  an  affair  of  state,  and  so  his 
holiday  ends.  After  all  there  was  nothing  in  it 
worth  losing  a  kingdom  for.  There  was  no 
great  sorrow  here,  nothing  tempestuous  to  wreck 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

a  life.  His  royal  middle  age  will  find  it  a  choice 
reasonably  made.  But  an  epicure  of  emotion 
could  probably  show  that  the  best  seasoning  for 
a  delightful  regret  is  a  prosaic  preference  for 
the  thing  you  chose.  The  imagination  has  bet 
ter  sport  with  what  is  a  little  beyond  the  range 
of  real  desire,  and  I  daresay  Prince  Heinrich's 
grief  was  the  most  agreeable  shade  of  the  blues 
imaginable. 

So  the  same  old  stage  that  plays  the  passions 
on  a  steam  piano  can  be  as  delicately  reminiscent 
as  a  violin,  and  this  playwright  can  make  a  light 
regret  for  outgrown  things  more  poignant  than 
D'Annunzio  could  the  pain  of  an  amputation. 


133 


ADVENTURES  OF  A  PLAYGOER 

III 

ON    CERTAIN    "PROBLEM"    PLAYS 

D'ANNUNZIO  in  his  English  translation  seems  a 
monotonous  and  unsmiling  young  man  of  re 
stricted  interests,  who,  failing  in  the  effects  of 
art,  falls  back  upon  the  merely  horrible.  With 
murder  or  mutilation  or  incest  in  the  wind,  you 
will  stay  on  to  the  end,  and  there  is  never  a 
moment  when  it  is  not  in  the  wind.  Portents  and 
premonitions,  fever  fits  and  chills  keep  the  doom 
incessantly  impending,  and  the  unfortunate 
characters  are  not  human  beings  at  all,  but 
merely  foregone  conclusions.  It  fixes  the  atten 
tion  as  surely  as  the  gong  of  an  ambulance.  It 
is  the  interest  of  deferred  brutality,  the  common 
device  of  those  who  seek  a  short  cut  to  strong 
writing,  for  people  will  often  confound  the 
sources  of  their  emotion  and  define  a  primitive 
animaLzest  in  complicated  art  terms.  In  an  early 
chapter  of  one  of  Zola's  novels,  a  young  girl 
comes  to  a  horrible  death  from  an  explosion,  and 
in  the  remainder  of  the  book  he  recurs  at  short 
134 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

intervals  to  the  mangled  body  of  the  fair  young 
girl  ripped  open  by  dynamite.  A  fascinated  re 
viewer  described  the  expedient  as  a  wonderfully 
skilful  use  of  the  Wagnerian  leit  mot'w.  If  the 
kind  of  interest  does  not  matter,  it  should  be  easy 
to  start  a  thrill,  for  people  of  artistic  tempera 
ment  are  as  likely  as  not  to  mistake  their  back 
bones  for  their  souls,  and  once  a-quiver,  they  are 
as  indifferent  as  jelly-bags  to  the  cause  of  it. 
The  cheats  of  the  artistic  temper  are  seldom 
caught  by  self-analysis,  and  few  of  d'Annunzio's 
admirers  know  how  they  came  by  their  goose- 
flesh.  In  the  Dead  City  the  fictitious  element  of 
mere  ghastliness  is  so  nearly  the  whole  thing  that 
there  is  nothing  left  for  art  to  do.  In  this  unin 
spired  following  of  the  Oedipus,  ancient  Greek 
seemliness  gives  way  to  modern  Latin  unreserve, 
and  Nemesis  becomes  a  buzzard,  and  a  little  man 
bustles  officiously  among  horrors  which  only  a 
genius  could  discreetly  deal  with. 

The  offence  of  the  plays  is  not  in  their  sub 
jects  but  in  their  methods,  and  the  offended  part 
of  us  is  not  our  morals  but  our  taste.     The  irk- 
135 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

some  continuity  of  the  passions,  the  fewness  and 
fixity  of  the  ideas,  the  unauthenticated  emotions, 
the  fatal  absence  of  humor  leave  us  with 
the  sense  of  humanity  unrealized  and  a 
world  shut  out.  While  there  are  afflicted  people 
like  those  in  the  Dead  City,  it  is  cheerful  to  think 
that  there  are  at  least  sanitariums  with  kind  at 
tendants  and  capable  house  physicians,  and  that 
one  encounters  them  singly  in  the  outside  world, 
never  a  whole  troop  of  them  at  once.  D'An- 
nunzio  measures  tragedy  by  the  mere  bulk  of 
suffering.  If  murder  is  to  be  done  in  the  end,  he 
sprinkles  blood  in  the  first  act,  gouges  out  an 
eye  in  the  second,  cuts  off  a  head  in  the  third. 
He  supplements  adultery  by  the  amputation  of  a 
woman's  hands,  and  enhances  incest  by  a  most 
pathetic  case  of  total  blindness  and  a  final  drown 
ing  scene.  Not  that  this  is  the  whole  story. 
There  is  symbolism,  and  there  are  the  Herculean 
efforts  of  a  minor  poet  to  rise  to  the  height  of  his 
great  argument.  And  it  is  well  known  that 
minor  poetry  is  of  all  things  the  most  perishable. 
Truth  may  traverse  many  languages  and  laugh- 
136 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

ter  may  drift  around  the  world,  but  minor  poetry 
dies  on  the  frontier  of  its  own  barnyard.  It  is  a 
field  of  endeavor  wherein  the  taste  of  the  words 
makes  all  the  difference.  But  Ibsen  can  hold  up 
his  head  in  English,  and  so  can  Sudermann,  and 
it  is  hard  to  believe  that  d'Annunzio,  as  a  play 
wright,  would  so  ignominiously  disappear  if  there 
had  been  more  of  him  to  start  with. 

Sudermann's  Joy  of  Living  profits  greatly 
by  comparison.  Those  who  called  it  the  highest 
peak  of  the  intellectual  drama  in  modern  times 
were  probably  measuring  Sudermann  in  units  of 
Mr.  Clyde  Fitch,  but  they  might  safely  have 
said  it  was  one  of  the  largest  toads  in  the  sea 
son's  dramatic  puddle.  It  was  certainly  the 
most  "literary,"  the  most  "psychological,"  the 
best  presented,  and,  above  all,  the  most  debated. 
The  ancient  story  of  the  unfaithful  wife  and 
her  excuses,  the  trusting  husband  who  is  unde 
ceived,  the  disloyal  friend,  despair,  atonement, 
suicide,  is  told  again,  but  in  a  modern,  analytical 
way.  The  wife's  sin  sprang  from  her  higher 
nature.  Her  soul,  it  seems,  was  fit  for  better 
137 


ADVENTURES    OF   A   PLAYGOER 

company.  The  other  man  was  on  her  spiritual 
plane,  while  her  husband,  though  amiable  and 
worthy,  was  intellectually  several  pegs  below  her. 
Should  she  not  taste  the  j  oy  of  living  ?  Better  to 
have  soared  and  suffered  than  never  to  have 
soared  at  all.  So  Beata  soared  away  from  the 
marriage  tie  at  the  behest  of  the  joy  of  living. 
But  only  for  a  little  while,  and  the  three  short 
years  of  sin  were  followed  by  twelve  of  atone 
ment.  She  made  her  husband  happy,  and  Rich 
ard,  her  former  lover,  became  his  closest  friend. 
She  induced  her  husband  to  resign  his  seat  in 
Parliament  in  order  that  Richard's  brilliant  gifts 
might  have  a  fair  field.  Michael,  the  husband, 
loyal  and  unsuspicious,  and  believing  with  her  in 
Richard's  genius,  threw  himself  into  the  canvass 
heart  and  soul.  Richard  was  elected,  but  in  a 
campaign  pamphlet  allusion  was  made  to  a  scan 
dal  involving  Michael's  honor,  and  upon  ques 
tioning  his  wife  and  Richard  he  learned  the 
truth.  All  three  being  of  noble  birth,  it  was  clear 
that  in  these  circumstances  somebody  must  die ; 
but  a  duel  would  bring  public  disgrace  upon  two 
138 


ADVENTURES    OF   A   PLAYGOER 

families.  Richard  therefore  resolved  on  suicide. 
Bombardinian  was  hit  and  Hononchroton- 
thologos  must  die.  One  may  not  see  the  logic  of 
it,  quite;  but  it  is  undoubtedly  the  rule  of  aris 
tocracy  or  stagecraft.  In  their  last  interview 
Beata  reads  his  intention  in  his  face  and  makes 
up  her  mind  to  kill  herself  that  he  may  live.  Her 
sudden  death  will  seem  more  plausible,  for  she 
has  heart  disease.  At  a  luncheon  given  by  her 
husband  to  the  chiefs  of  the  party,  ostensi 
bly  in  honor  of  Richard's  success,  but  really 
to  quiet  suspicion,  she  makes  an  ironical 
speech  in  praise  of  the  joy  of  living  and  takes 
poison.  After  her  death  the  two  men  read  a 
letter  she  has  left  saying  that  Richard  now 
must  live.  He  agrees  to  live,  and  the  play  is 
ended. 

Shall  we  fly  to  our  hearthstones,  like  the  good 
old-fashioned  critic  of  the  stage,  and  with  purple 
cheeks  burst  into  alliterative  wrath  and  call  it  a 
"fetid  phantasy"?  Must  we  be  fierce  as  fogies 
and  tear  the  language  all  to  smithereens  trying 
to  find  things  bad  enough  to  say  of  "tainted 
139 


ADVENTURES    OF   A   PLAYGOER 

talent"  and  of  "putrid  plays"  and  all  the  "slith 
ering  slime"  of  "poisoned  pruriency"?  Or  dare 
we  at  this  late  day  be  less  robustious?  To  con 
demn  the  play,  as  many  have  done,  on  the 
strength  of  the  theme  alone  would  commit  one  to 
a  ruthless  policy.  The  world  has  gone  too  far; 
too  many  novels  and  poems  and  plays  are  framed 
on  it ;  the  classics  are  still  too  fresh  in  our  minds ; 
books  are  too  accessible,  even  to  the  young,  for 
any  such  spinster  censorship.  The  main  defect 
of  the  play  is  its  limitation  of  interest.  The 
"problem"  that  has  lately  usurped  the  stage — the 
only  problem,  they  would  have  us  think,  that  of 
husband  and  wife  and  a  tertium  quid,  whether 
male  or  female — is  becoming  wearisome  even  to 
those  who  are  firmly  convinced  that  monogamy 
will  last  of  itself  though  they  strike  no  blow  for 
it.  Clever  as  Sudermann  is,  he  has  failed  to  sug 
gest  in  his  naked  souls  the  least  variety.  He 
catches  a  single  emotion  from  life  and  isolates  it. 
Beata  lives  and  dies  with  it.  You  would  never 
guess  it  was  part  of  her  higher  life  if  he  did  not 
tell  you  so.  Nor  is  there  anything  in  Richard 
140 


ADVENTURES   OF   A  PLAYGOER 

to  explain  why  she  is  drawn  to  him.  It  is  taken 
for  granted  that  they  are  spiritual  mates,  and  a 
great  deal  results  from  it.  Somehow  or  other 
we  are  to  assume  that  the  angels  contrived  it,  and 
if  human  institutions  stand  in  the  way,  they  must 
be  swept  aside  by  a  noble  sin.  Their  souls  are 
endowed  with  heavenly  humps  of  the  same  pat 
tern.  It  is  intellectually  bare,  purely  emotional, 
the  mechanics  of  unlawful  love,  and  though  it  is 
most  skilfully  devised,  you  watch  it  only  as  a 
game  and  think  what  a  tight  and  narrow  little 
place  the  present  stage  is.  Why  should  we  be  so 
mercilessly  confined?  A  man  is  larger  than  his 
largest  passion ;  a  woman  is  better  than  her  love, 
and  souls  that  run  like  tram-cars  on  their  rails 
make  for  the  madhouse  in  the  outside  world.  But 
the  poor  starvelings  of  the  stage  must  shiver 
always  in  their  moral  barebones,  and  because 
their  maker  could  not  give  them  flesh  we  say, 
How  searching  his  "psychology" !  Those  who 
have  a  birthright  to  their  art  always  suggest  com 
plexity.  From  them  you  guess  a  world  of  many 
things,  however  simple  their  means  may  seem. 
141 


ADVENTURES    OF   A   PLAYGOER 

They  never  keep  you  staring  stupidly  at  any 
single  pinwheel  of  passion. 

Nor  do  they,  like  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  aim 
merely  to  prove  something.  It  is  well  known  that 
Mr.  Shaw  does  not  wish  to  be  regarded  as  merely 
brilliant.  He  demands  a  fair  judgment  on  the 
truth  of  what  he  has  to  say  apart  from  his  man 
ner  of  saying  it.  He  professes  a  message  and  he 
is  not  satisfied  with  a  smile  of  intellectual  pleas 
ure  or  a  stare  of  astonishment.  Like  most  sensi 
tive  and  clever  men,  he  hates  an  attempt  to  classi 
fy  him,  and  he  would  try  to  squirm  out  of  any 
adjective  that  is  at  all  definite.  At  a  public 
meeting  not  long  ago,  some  one  having  intro 
duced  him  with  the  remark  that  his  only  fault 
was  that  he  was  too  talented,  he  rose  and  said  that 
his  talents  were  but  ordinary  and  that  his  strong 
point  had  always  been  his  character.  But 
though  a  very  clever  man,  Mr.  Shaw  does  not 
understand  some  of  the  simplest  laws  of  human 
nature.  He  is  not  even  aware  of  the  danger  of 
being  amusing.  People  learn  while  they  laugh, 
but  very  few  of  them  know  that  they  are  learn- 
14* 


ADVENTURES    OF    A   PLAYGOER 

ing.  When  the  midriff  resumes  its  former  place 
the  mind  pretty  generally  goes  on  as  before,  per 
haps  a  little  repentant.  True  prophets  have 
sometimes  been  great  humorists  (witness  Job), 
but  their  fame  as  prophets,  I  believe,  was  mainly 
posthumous.  Cervantes  laughed  Spain's  chi 
valry  away,  but  meanwhile  Cervantes  died.  If 
Mr.  Shaw  were  always  right,  his  manner  before 
the  world  would  be  sadly  against  him.  The  world 
expects  from  its  serious  men  a  certain  degree  of 
dulness. 

Compared  with  most  of  our  playwrights,  Mr. 
Shaw  is  not  only  far  more  entertaining  than 
they,  but  sounder.  It  is  only  when  we  compare 
him  (as  he  expressly  demands)  with  the  best  of 
all  time,  that  he  goes  to  pieces.  All  great  play 
wrights  have  seen  that  every  man  was  something 
more  than  a  leading  motive.  They  have  never 
used  him  merely  as  a  pawn;  that  is,  to  prove 
something.  They  have  suggested  a  thousand  ir 
relevant  things.  At  times  they  have  almost 
seemed  to  forget  their  purpose.  In  any  true 
comedy  man  is  a  small  figure  dancing  against  the 
143 


ADVENTURES    OF   A   PLAYGOER 

sky — temporal  antics  on  a  background  of  ulti 
mate  facts,  birth  and  death  and  eternity.  That 
is  the  only  joke,  and  every  great  writer  has  per 
ceived  it.  Not  one  of  them  has  ever  been  a  mere 
debater  of  propositions.  No  writer  ever  created 
a  man  without  suggesting  a  mystery.  The 
plain  man  has  this  in  common  with  Shake 
speare  :  He  too  is  aware  of  unknown  things,  makes 
guesses,  and  is  quite  unreasonable.  His  mys 
teries  begin  too  soon,  but  he  has  them.  From 
merely  clever  people  you  might  suppose  there 
was  no  mystery  at  all.  They  make  things  so 
clear  to  you. 


144 


ADVENTURES    OF   A   PLAYGOER 
IV 

CONVENTIONAL    PLAYS 

ON  seeing  a  succession  of  conventional  plays  I 
have  often  blessed  my  stars  that  I  was  not  a 
technical  critic  of  the  stage.  For  months  at  a 
time  the  condition  of  the  American  drama  is  such 
that  it  would  seem  desirable  for  any  grown-up, 
serious  man  to  drop  the  subject  altogether.  If 
he  went  to  the  theatre  during  that  interval  it  was 
simply  a  frivolous  mistake.  Surely  it  is  not 
worth  while  to  express  one's  self  very  solemnly 
about  it.  That  is  where  the  natural  man  has  a 
great  advantage  over  critics.  He  may  stop 
talking,  if  he  likes,  as  soon  as  his  thought  ceases, 
whereas  by  the  strange  compulsion  of  the  press 
they  must  keep  straight  on,  not  only  when  they 
prefer  not  to  do  so  themselves,  but  when  others 
prefer  not  to  have  them.  It  is  a  fancied  obliga 
tion,  arising  from  some  sort  of  a  social  misunder 
standing  ;  and  every  one  is  the  worse  for  it.  For 
truthful  comment  on  ordinary  books  and  plays, 
give  me  the  private  monosyllable,  the  sigh  of  a 
145 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

personal  friend,  the  look  of  the  latest  victim — 
anything,  in  fact,    but    the    reluctant    fluency 
of    professionals.        Not    that    this    miserably 
didactic  group  of  men  are  in  any  sense  to  blame 
for  it.      It  should  not  be  forgotten  that  most 
dramatic  criticism    is    written  by  persons  who 
would  rather  be  in  bed.     It  is  a  thought  that  dis 
poses  one  to  charity.     It  is  an  inhuman  system 
that  requires  a  man  to  talk  like  an  Act  of  Con 
gress  about  every  little  thing  that  comes  along. 
Sometimes,  like  Troilus,  in  the  play,  he  should 
be  permitted  to  say:    "I  cannot  fight  upon  this 
argument.     It  is  too  starved  a  subject  for  mv 
sword."     Little  do  we  outsiders  know   of  that 
awful  scramble  for  edifying  words  on  the  eve  of 
publication,  or  those  barbarous  contracts  where 
by  critics,  like  hydraulic  pumps,  are  constrained 
to    continuous    expression.      They    account,    no 
doubt,  for  many  things  that  puzzle  us — for  the 
amazing  difference  between  what  we  see  and  what 
we  read  about,  between  the  living  and  the  writ 
ing  man.     Why  this  grim  little  set  of  duties? 
Surely  one  may  take  his  private  ease  at  the  play- 
146 


ADVENTURES    OF    A   PLAYGOER 

house  without  bothering  about  teaching  people 
what  they  ought  to  like  or  elevating  anything. 
The  tastes  have  no  ambassadors,  and  sometimes 
the  main  use  of  criticism  is  in  showing  what  man 
ner  of  man  the  critic  is.  An  attempt  at  conver 
sion  in  this  field  is  an  impertinence.  It  was  in  the 
hope  that  we  should  remain  in  some  respects  un 
like  that  Nature  made  so  many  of  us  and  put  us 
up  in  separate  packages.  Yet  for  one  man  who 
expresses  his  own  taste  we  have  a  hundred  mis 
sionaries  to  other  people's. 

When  we  simple-minded  heathen  r^ad  the 
elaborate  critical  reviews  of  certain  society 
plays  we  begin  to  wonder  if  there  is  an}^  King  on 
the  stage  quite  so  artificial  as  this  cliticism. 
They  are  harmless  little  conventional  plavs,  and 
every  one  who  sees  them  knows  he  is  more  s>r  less 
pleasantly  wasting  his  time.  No  one  but  a  critic 
with  a  public  duty  to  perform  would  drerm  of 
looking  at  them  in  that  solemn  way.  They  van 
ish  upon  analysis ;  they  are  built  on  patterns,,  and 
not  on  plots,  and  nobody  either  likes  or  dislikes 
them  for  the  important  reasons  the  critics  give. 

147 


ADVENTURES    OF   A   PLAYGOER 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  a  hundred  small 
matters  of  vital  importance  to  us  which  these 
guardians  of  public  morals  and  tastes  take  no 
account  of. 

No  man,  unless  he  were  thinking  for  publica 
tion,  would  give  a  moment's  reflection  to  the 
moral  effects  of  the  typically  wicked  little  so 
ciety  play  wherein  we  try  to  imitate  the  French 
from  a  distance.  If  he  shudders  all  the  way 
through,  it  is  not  a  moral  shudder.  It  is  only 
distaste  for  sheer  coarseness.  The  result  of  an 
Anglo-Saxon  determination  to  be  French  is 
usually  coarseness.  Critics  confound  their  re 
pugnance  for  this  kind  of  thing  with  moral  in 
dignation.  It  has  no  higher  source  than  the  dis 
like  of  celluloid  cuffs  and  large  paste  diamonds. 
It  is  the  characterstic  of  the  so-called  sinful 
American  play  that  the  devil  himself  has  lost 
all  his  devilish  graces.  Why  bother  pur  heads 
about  the  morals  of  an  enchantress,  in  the  pres 
ence  of  the  cold,  hard  fact  that  she  does  not  en 
chant  ? 

It  is  one  of  the  ironies  of  this  world  that  we 
148 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

dislike  people  most  for  the  qualities  they  cannot 
help,  and  if  you  were  required  honestly  to  select 
the  nine  persons  whom  you  would  most  willingly 
see  hanged,  I  venture  to  say  that  nine  entirely 
blameless  lives  would  be  sacrificed.  Thence  comes 
it  that  the  admirable  objective  reasons  the  critics 
give  for  approving  or  disapproving  things  on 
the  stage  are  so  unsatisfying.  We  are  the  most 
violent  when  there  is  no  reason  at  all,  but  only  a 
personal  distinction.  Abstract  justice  is  beyond 
us,  and  we  may  as  well  frankly  admit  that  we  are 
biased  on  the  subject  of  every  play  we  have  ever 
seen. 

In  all  things  below  the  range  of  genius  it  is 
foolish  to  talk  in  universal  terms.  Whim  is  a 
just  enough  god  for  the  small  matters  of  every 
day,  and  life  has  large  areas  of  licensed  anarchy 
where  truth  cannot  reach  as  far  as  your  next- 
door  neighbor.  Yet  we  approach  these  subjects 
with  a  gravity  which  has  always  been  the  angels' 
greatest  joke — the  sort  of  gravity  that  the 
Frenchman  meant  when  he  called  it  "a  mystery 
of  the  body  invented  to  conceal  the  failings  of 
149 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

the  soul."  We  are  forever  laying  down  the  law 
where  there  is  no  law,  and  setting  up  a  model 
when  it  is  the  greatest  of  Heaven's  mercies  to 
allow  all  models  to  be  departed  from.  We  Amer 
icans  are  imaginative  in  business  (where  our 
heart  is),  but  businesslike  in  our  imagination. 
The  aim  of  American  playwrights  is  to  be  in 
stantly  comprehensible  to  every  member  of  a 
miscellaneous  crowd,  and  criticism,  which  on  cer 
tain  occasions  ought  to  be  merely  a  matter  of 
good-tempered  self-revelation,  seeks  always  to 
establish  a  constitution  and  by-laws  for  the  art  of 
pleasing.  That  is  why  the  unedited  American  is 
so  much  more  delightful  than  his  cautious  broth 
er  with  the  pen,  and  why  the  best  things  that 
life  has  to  offer  are  not  yet  either  printed  or 
staged.  But  taking  it  all  in  all,  the  critics  do 
not  come  so  near  the  stage  as  the  stage  comes  to 
reality.  I  can  recall  several  passages  in  Amer 
ican  plays,  but  not  one  word  of  the  criticism. 


150 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 


PRIVATE    TASTES    AND    PRINTED 
CRITICISM 

AFTER  reading  many  pages  of  dramatic  criti 
cism,  some  of  it  quite  serious  and  bearing  a  good 
French  stamp,  I  am  still  harassed  by  doubts  as 
to  the  limits  of  the  personal  equation.  Why  that 
air  of  more  than  personal  certainty?  Where  is 
the  table  of  weights  and  measures  by  which  plays 
and  players  are  so  surely  gauged  ?  Many  a  critic 
is  so  sure  of  his  ground  that  he  seems  more  like  a 
committee  framing  resolutions  than  a  man  writ 
ing  down  what  he  thinks,  and  he  usually  wishes 
to  save  or  elevate  the  public,  direct,  sanctify,  and 
govern  it,  or  hold  it  on  his  knee.  One  of  them  re 
cently  remarked  that  after  laboring  in  the  vine 
yard  for  fifteen  years  without  effecting  the  least 
improvement  in  other  people's  tastes,  he  had 
abandoned  his  didactic  mission  with  a  sinking 
heart.  A  trained  and  technical  public  taster, 
and  yet  without  a  single  convert,  he  now  lives  as 
a  private  person,  lonesome  but  correct.  Most 
critics  believe  that  technical  experience  gives 
151 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

them  a  certain  authority,  and  the  worst  of  their 
worries  is  the  presumption  of  discordant  and 
haphazard  persons  like  you  and  me,  who  feel 
that  there  is  a  broad  zone  of  dramatic  matters 
where  it  is  unsafe  for  a  minute  to  take  the  word 
of  another  unless  we  know  his  birth,  breeding, 
family  history,  associations  in  early  life,  the 
books  he  reads,  his  manners  at  table,  and  the 
sort  of  wife  he  enjoys.  What  is  the  foot-pound 
of  gentility  and  where  is  the  trigonometry  of 
grace,  and  why  take  a  man's  word  for  the  charm 
of  the  leading  lady  unless  we  know  the  man?  It 
is  delightful  to  express  one's  views  on  these  points 
but  preposterous  for  others  to  accept  them.  It 
is  pleasant  to  argue  but  hideous  to  convince,  and 
for  my  part  I  should  loathe  a  convert  in  this  field 
the  moment  I  had  made  him,  as  a  mere  tedious 
duplicate  when  one  of  us  was  enough. 

Current  criticism  seems  largely  an  effort  to 
speak  impersonally  on  purely  personal  affairs. 
In  a  region  of  licensed  disorder  people  still  ask 
for  a  rule.  So  the  stage  critic  becomes  a  priest 
of  prejudice,  a  little  Moses  on  a  Sinai  of  whim, 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

absolute  where  everything  is  relative,  sure  of  a 
right  way  and  a  wrong  way  where  either  way 
will  send  you  fast  asleep,  a  specialist  in  things 
that  do  not  matter,  and  a  moral  guide  through 
nonsense  where  the  deadly  sins  seem  silly  and  the 
devil  feels  too  depressed  to  tempt.  Nothing  on 
the  stage  is  so  far  removed  from  human  nature  as 
the  things  we  read  about  it,  and  the  world  is  not  a 
whit  more  pompous  behind  footlights  than  it  is 
when  it  takes  up  its  pen.  That  is  why  I  pause 
here  in  a  paroxysm  of  humility  to  remark  that 
any  commentary  of  mine  is  not  true  for  any 
other  person  under  the  sun  but  reports  things  as 
they  seem  exclusively  to  my  round  and  artless 
eyes,  that  I  mean  to  be  a  mother  to  no  man,  that 
sic  vos  non  vobis  is  no  motto  for  me  but  for 
sheep,  bees,  pedagogues,  and  preachers,  the  Em 
peror  William,  the  evening  newspaper,  and  the 
United  States  Supreme  Court. 

Principles  may  be  had  for  the  asking,  but  in 

spite  of  the  large  population  of  this  planet  men 

and  women  remain  to-day  the  most  inaccessible 

things  on  it.    Plays  may  be  true  to  every  drama- 

153 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

tic  principle,  run  like  clockwork,  have  a  good 
idea  behind  them,  fit  the  audience  like  an  old 
coat,  lack  nothing  in  short  that  you  could  give 
a  name  to.  The  playwright  may  be  so  clever 
that  you  can  suggest  in  him  no  possible  improve 
ment  except  that  he  be  born  again.  There  are 
dozens  of  negatively  admirable  plays  and  irre 
proachable  playwrights.  They  lack  only  the  qual 
ities  for  which  there  is  no  formula  to  make  them 
Shakespearos,  every  one.  It  cannot  even  be  ex 
plained  what  makes  the  difference  between  such 
a  play  as  Whitewashing  Julia  by  Mr.  Jones,  and 
The  Admirable  Crichton  by  Mr.  Barrie.  Were 
I  writing  its  prospectus  I  could  make  White 
washing  Julia  look  the  better  of  the  two,  or  at 
least  the  more  novel.  Mr.  Jones  takes  the  prov 
erb,  The  pot  calls  the  kettle  black,  and  by  means 
of  it  saves  Julia  from  her  enemies,  but  he  departs 
from  dramatic  usage  by  leaving  us  certain  that 
the  pot  told  the  truth.  The  fact  that  Julia  is  not 
whitewashed  and  that  he  lets  us  see  her  to  a  final 
triumph  over  worse  sinners,  who  are  also  less  at 
tractive,  than  herself  makes  the  play  essentially 
154 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

plausible  and  new.  Besides  that,  it  is,  as  the 
critics  say,  "well  built,"  which  means  that  the 
playwright  has  graciously  supplied  every  effect 
with  a  cause,  believing  that  the  human  reason  in 
a  debased  form  may  still  perdure  even  in  a  play 
goer. 

Therein  also  the  play  is  unusual.  Contrast  it, 
for  instance,  with  this  excellent  example  of  good, 
every-day  dramatic  merchandise,  where  the  main 
point  is  whether  the  situations  are  amusing  and 
not  how  they  came  about:  A  nice  woman  di 
vorces  a  worthless  husband  and  a  nice  man 
divorces  a  worthless  wife.  It  would  be  cheerful, 
thinks  the  playwright,  to  make  the  two  good 
ones  pair  off,  so  in  comes  coincidence,  like  a  fairy 
godmother,  and  the  thing  is  done.  Though  at 
present  unaware  of  each  other's  identity,  it 
seems  that  they  have  known  and  loved  each 
other  long  ago — coincidence  No.  1.  It  seems 
also  that  the  worthless  husband  of  the  one  has 
been  misconducting  himself  with  the  worthless 
wife  of  the  other — coincidence  No.  2.  And  so 
from  many  minor  surprises,  assumed  names,  and 
155 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

mistaken  identities,  there  results  the  typical 
"comedy  of  mariners,"  derived  from  nothing  ever 
seen  outside  the  theatre,  but  shrewdly  based  on 
long  acquaintance  with  the  audience  within.  No 
one  can  say  whether  it  is  comedy  half-drunk  or 
farce  half-sober,  and  nobody  cares,  except  the 
clever  people  who  are  always  waking  up  at  the 
wrong  time.  Several  critics  fretted  because  the 
worthless  husband  shammed  fits  which  they  called 
a  low  trick  for  the  benefit  of  the  gallery.  But 
there  is  a  gallery,  is  there  not?  And  it  has  just 
as  good  a  right  to  its  fits  as  the  orchestra  stalls 
to  their  jovial  divorces.  Something  for  every 
body  is  the  kindly  democratic  motto  of  a  good 
market  play.  If  by  chance  an  idiot  should  stray 
into  the  family  circle,  even  he  must  not  be  coldly 
ignored. 

On  this  plane  let  us  make  no  class  dis 
tinctions,  and  above  all  let  us  not  be  invidiously 
thoughtful.  It  is  the  typical  comedy;  and  the 
typical  comedy  is  the  blindman's  bluff  of  the 
understanding,  and  the  clever  people  are  the  hor 
rid  little  wretches  who  peep.  If  we  join  in  the 
156 


ADVENTURES    OP    A   PLAYGOER 

game  let  us  regard  the  rules.  If  we  stand 
apart  as  public  enlighteners,  then  let  us  be  con 
sistently  vigilant.  Uproot  the  platitude  wherever 
found.  Crucify  the  comic  weekly  papers. 
Perish  the  political  speech  and  the  afternoon  tea 
and  the  latest  novel  and  the  woman's  hat.  Let 
there  be  a  total  silence  to  be  broken  only  by  bril 
liant  remarks.  "The  existing  popular  drama 
of  the  day,"  says  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw,  "is  quite 
out  of  the  question  for  cultivated  people  who  are 
accustomed  to  use  their  brains."  The  existing 
popular  anything  is  also  out  of  the  question.  In 
fact,  the  population  itself  is  no  fit  company  for 
the  clever  people.  If  they  ever  saw  things  in 
their  actual  relations,  what  a  lot  there  would  be 
for  them  to  do ! 

But  Whitewashing  Julia  belongs  to  another 
class  of  plays,  because  it  bears  traces  of  the 
author's  effort  to  set  down  what  is  in  his  own 
head  instead  of  what  he  finds  ready-made  in  the 
heads  of  his  audience.  Mr.  Jones  meant  to  be 
artistic.  He  wished  to  handle  an  old  theme  in  a 
light,  graceful,  and  novel  manner.  There  is, 
157 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

however,  no  recipe  for  that  manner,  and  though 
the  dialogue  was  strewn  with  his  good  intentions 
we  did  not  see  any  sign  of  fulfillment.  It  was  as 
good  a  play  in  outline  as  any  presented  during 
the  season,  and  as  well  acted.  Its  construction  is 
undeniably  good,  and  the  construction  of  some  of 
Shakespeare's  plays  is,  as  critics  have  often 
proven,  undeniably  bad.  But  Mr.  Jones  has  a 
heavy  English  middle-class  way  with  him  and  if 
he  steps  lightly  his  joints  crack.  He  has  no 
special  pleasure  in  living,  but  he  is  grimly  deter 
mined  that  you  shall  think  he  knows  life.  He 
never  knew  an  individual,  but  he  can  gather  types. 
Like  the  blind  man  in  the  Bible,  he  sees  men  as 
trees  walking ;  and  he  has  learned  their  botanical 
names.  With  a  good  point  he  is  a  little  too  em 
phatic.  His  amusing  things  are  a  little  too  pro 
longed.  He  is  the  sort  of  man  about  whom  you 
feel  instinctively,  How  like  he  is  to  everybody 
else.  It  is  a  deep  internal  little  trouble — no  one 
to  blame  but  Mother  Nature — a  private  matter, 
a  mere  accident  of  birth. 

The  elements  of  The  Admirable  CrlcTiton  are 
15$ 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

not  all  amazing.  Mr.  Barrie  merely  happened 
to  notice  that  people  have  an  amusing  way  of 
mistaking  their  luck  for  their  merits,  confound 
ing  circumstances  with  native  gifts,  and  caste 
with  personal  differences.  So  he  wrecked  a  half- 
dozen  of  them  on  an  island  and  made  new  cir 
cumstances  to  make  new  men  not  to  prove  any 
thing  that  we  did  not  know  before,  but  just  for 
the  pleasure  of  seeing  an  old  truth  freshly.  It 
is  a  series  of  elementary  propositions.  Deduct 
from  a  pompous  old  earl  what  society  gives  him 
and  there  may  be  only  enough  of  him  left  to  play 
on  an  accordeon.  Banish  the  second  son  of  a 
peer  from  his  environment  and  he  may  just 
barely  make  of  himself  an  indifferent  carpenter. 
Lady  Agatha  may  be  by  natural  gifts  a  fish- 
woman  and  Lady  Mary  just  clever  enough  to 
wait  at  table,  and  it  may  be  that  the  only  person 
whom  nature  has  well  endowed  is  the  butler.  And 
should  that  distinguished  household  be  stranded 
on  a  lonely  island  its  members  would  soon  shake 
down  into  their  natural  places,  leaving  the  butler 
at  the  top.  On  this  simple  and  sure  foundation 
159 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

there  would  inevitably  rise  in  that  lonely  isle  a 
butler-monarchy,  wherein  the  subject  class  would 
consist  of  worn-out  lords  and  useless  mistresses, 
who  would  be  as  servile  under  the  new  conditions 
as  they  were  pretentious  under  the  old.  Then  if 
suddenly  restored  to  their  own  community,  they 
would  fall  at  once  into  their  old  grooves  and  de 
spise  the  butler  and  try  to  forget ;  and  the  butler 
being  a  man  of  sense  would  expect  to  be  despised, 
for  he  knows  them  by  this  time  for  ordinary 
people,  that  is  to  say,  inert,  custom-made  crea 
tures,  who  move  only  as  they  are  pushed.  The 
idea  is  as  common  as  air,  and  many  social  phi 
losophers  have  made  books  of  it,  weighing  as 
much  as  ten  pounds  each.  If  it  seems  new,  that 
is  where  the  art  comes  in.  The  fancy  takes  its 
fun  with  just  these  familiar  things  which  it  car 
ries  out  into  little  concrete  surprises,  proving 
that  human  nature  has  no  end,  and  the  world  no 
commonplace.  Art  has  no  horror  of  an  old  fact, 
but  of  an  old  mind  to  see  it  with. 

For  any  artistic  enterprise  to  prosper  it  must 
receive  a  subsidy  from  on  high,  and  Mr.  Barrie 
160 


.ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

starts  with  an  unfair  advantage  over  Mr.  Jones. 
With  him  "the  little  gods"  cooperated,  and  so  he 
"found  a  way."  That  is  the  thing  that  makes 
the  difference — the  only  thing  that  really  mat 
ters — and  I  defy  any  man  to  explain. 

These  considerations  (and  a  dozen  other  con 
crete  instances  would  serve  as  well  or  better) 
should  impel  critics  now  and  again  to  lay  aside 
judicial  airs  and  paternal  manners  and  confess 
that  they  are  quite  ignorant  of  other  people's 
truth,  that  the  best  things  are  always  the  least 
definable,  that  art  fails  in  proportion  as  we  can 
state  its  formulas  and  that  the  world  is  a  play 
that  would  not  be  worth  the  seeing  if  we  knew  the 
plot.  And  when  it  comes  to  the  conventional 
drama,  the  cheese  and  garlic  in  the  windmill, 
mere  social  peanuts  and  popcorn,  his  emotions 
are  not  very  important.  They  are  for  the  most 
part  harmless  little  circus  feelings  which  no 
words  in  the  critical  vocabulary  seem  to  fit.  And 
this,  as  I  take  it,  is  a  good  safe  rule  for  any 
critic :  No  matter  how  many  the  swans  were  in  his 
youth,  if  he  would  grow  old  decently  he  must  cul- 
161 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

tivate  a  friendly  willingness  toward  a  widening 
circle  of  geese.  Otherwise  he  will  become  that 
saddest  of  barnyard  reformers,  the  crusader 
against  commonplace,  and  the  world  will  squeak 
as  it  turns  on  its  axis,  and  he  may  find  himself 
too  serious  a  person  even  for  the  angels  when  he 
dies. 

All  of  which  sounds  rather  devil-may-care, 
but  it  is  not.  It  holds  true  in  larger  matters 
than  the  present  stage.  There  are  things  on 
which  we  ought  all  to  agree :  The  Binomial  For 
mula,  that  kind  hearts  are  more  than  coronets, 
the  law  of  diminishing  returns,  monogamy,  the 
exiguity  of  American  literature,  the  Ten  Com 
mandments,  and  that  Shakespeare  is  greater  than 
Alexander  Pope.  There  are  things  in  which  it 
is  desirable  forever  to  disagree :  The  meaning  of 
life,  the  proper  way  to  boil  an  egg,  choosing  a 
wife,  which  of  Shakespeare's  plays  is  the  best, 
and  the  real  reason  for  disliking  Jones  and  ad 
miring  a  sunset.  No  critic  whose  work  has  en 
dured  ever  wished  to  impose  on  others  the  precise 
hierarchy  of  his  enjoyments.  He  never  was 
162 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

mainly  a  fisher  of  men,  and  if  now  and  then  he 
seems  to  land  some  of  them  body  and  soul,  they 
are  mostly  the  little  ones.  John  Ruskin,  bent 
on  rescue  though  he  was,  knew  in  his  heart  that 
he  would  never  have  made  people  think  at  all  if 
he  had  not  made  them  think  differently.  Had  he 
ever  met  his  spiritual  twin  he  would  certainly 
have  trumped  up  some  excuse  for  a  fight  with 
him.  Every  true  critic  is  academic,  impression 
istic,  a  hermit,  a  leader  of  men,  an  epicure,  a 
missionary,  and  at  the  last  analysis  a  human  be 
ing  more  in  need  of  company  than  disciples.  He 
expounds  the  law  and  loves  the  diversity  within 
the  law;  writes  sometimes  for  the  good  of  men 
and  sometimes  for  the  fun  of  it.  And  if  he  is 
not  all  this,  and  a  good  deal  more,  his  books  are 
buried  with  him.  We  lesser  folks  are  not  to 
blame  if  we  betray  an  equal  laxity. 

Whenever  an  academic  writer  reads  a  book  he 
thinks  at  once  of  his  duty  to  man  and  hunts  for 
a  useful  lesson.  When  a  phrasemaker  reads  it,  he 
thinks,  Here  is  my  chance  for  a  perfectly  stun 
ning  stage  entrance.  One  weighs  a  ton  and  the 
163 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

other  weighs  nothing  at  all.  The  critics  of  the 
chair,  prosectors  in  literary  anatomy.,.  Casaubons, 
commentators,  biologists  of  books  divide  the  field 
with  the  harlequins.  Neither  class  shows  any  lik 
ing  for  the  thing  itself.  They  sweat  with  pur 
pose  and  descant  on  pleasure  with  a  gritting  of 
teeth.  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  would  die  of  shame  if 
caught  with  a  platitude  upon  him.  Professor 
Junk  would  die  of  fear  if  caught  without  one. 
Mr.  Shaw,  hot  on  the  trail  of  paradox,  will  show 
that  Shakespeare  never  conceived  a  human  char 
acter.  Professor  Junk,  author  of  "Hybridisa 
tion  of  Fiction  Forms,"  classifies  all  novels  by 
their  "central  thoughts,"  counts  the  nouns  in 
"Paradise  Lost,"  shows  how  Poe's  "Raven"  was 
anticipated  twenty  centuries  ago  by  Kia  Yi,  the 
Chinaman.  In  a  solemn  voice  they  bid  you 
choose,  like  Hercules  at  the  road-forks.  Are  you 
academic?  Then  you  must  never  smoke  your 
pipe  except  for  what  it  teaches.  Are  you  "im 
pressionistic"  ?  Then  you  will  never  light  a  pipe 
when  there  are  Roman  candles. 

After  living  for  a  while  among  these  old  der- 
164 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

ricks  of  the  academic  world  you  grow  very  tired 
of  the  uplift.  Is  there  to  be  no  talk  among 
equals?  When  you  meet  a  man  must  you  im 
mediately  heave  yourself  up  alongside  and  try 
to  hoist  him?  Pen  and  ink  and  a  sleepless  pur 
pose  either  to  instruct  or  amaze,  vigilant  self- 
omission,  the  habit  of  talking  down,  a  close 
reckoning  on  the  public  (how  high  this  sentence 
will  lift  it,  how  much  it  will  be  tickled  by  that), 
give  to  our  critical  writings  the  look  of  a  steam 
roller  flattening  out  the  angle  of  variation.  A 
good  deal  of  the  work  should  be  transferred  to 
the  government  at  Washington,  where  it  could 
easily  fit  in  under  the  Secretary  of  Agriculture, 
be  attached  perhaps  to  the  Bureau  of  Animal  In 
dustry.  Leave  out  the  man  and  the  rest  is  as  easy 
as  crop  reports.  Leave  the  man  in  and  there  is 
not  only  the  danger  of  deviation,  but  of  a  guilty 
pleasure  in  other  people's  diversity.  For  in 
private  life  we  allow  ourselves  great  unconcern 
and  many  irrelevances.  We  are  never  exclusively 
gymnasts,  wits,  anti-imperialists,  or  crowbars  of 
the  higher  plane.  There  is  a  large  region  wherein 
165 


ADVENTURES    OF    A    PLAYGOER 

we  are  glad  to  see  our  neighbors  going  their 
own  way.  In  private  life  we  insist  on  having 
our  own  latch  key  and  dying  a  separate  death. 
It  is  only  in  print  that  people  are  less  than  their 
propaganda  and  that  the  desire  of  making  a 
proselyte  underlies  every  word.  Print  is  the  only 
place  where  men  are  merely  pattern-makers,  and 
where,  if  you  say  that  patterns  are  not  your 
sole  interest  night  and  day,  you  are  set  down  as 
a  debauchee,  careless  how  many  rascals  may  es 
cape  between  your  sentences. 

But  if  you  cannot  guide  the  public  aright, 
why  address  it?  It  is  like  saying,  If  you  can 
not  reform  a  man,  why  speak  to  him  ?  Somehow 
or  other,  the  words  must  come  out  and  when  a 
man  has  more  to  say  than  people  will  submit  to 
face  to  face,  it  is  customary  now  to  print  it. 
Should  the  day  ever  come  when  the  world  will 
neither  listen  nor  read,  there  wiTI^till  be  a  roar 
of  soliloquies.  Strike  us  dumb  and  we  shall  carve 
our  thoughts  upon  the  trees  or  tattoo  our  bodies 
with  them. 


166 


PART  V 

RIGOURS    OF    THE   HIGHER 
EDUCATION 


BACCALAUREATE    SERMONS 

IN  the  month  of  roses  the  newspapers  are  full  of 
unwise  quotations  from  the  baccalaureate  ser 
mons  which  have  been  given  in  various  parts  of 
the  country.  The  quotations  are  unwise  because, 
when  unaided  by  the  voice  or  presence  of  the 
speaker,  a  random  passage  from  a  pulpit  oration 
is  apt  to  seem  ineffective.  And  when  you  see  a 
dozen  such  passages  in  parallel  columns,  you  suf 
fer  a  little  from  a  sense  of  uniformity.  It  would 
be  indelicate  to  say  weariness,  for  you  know  those 
exhorters  to  be  good  men  and  true,  and  you  honor 
their  motives  and  respect  the  occasion  and  the 
167 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

practice.  Your  doubts  have  to  do  with  the  style 
of  the  address  and  that  only.  It  is  the  extreme 
usualness  of  this  style  that  is  most  striking.  To 
be  sure,  the  speakers  are  addressing  the  same 
class  of  men  on  the  same  sort  of  an  occasion,  and 
you  would  not  expect  any  great  variations  in 
essentials.  Nor  is  a  usual  style  necessarily  a  bad 
style.  Witness  the  liturgies.  Still  there  is  a 
limit  beyond  which  the  same  phrase  or  turn  of 
thought  will  not  serve,  in  spite  of  the  vast  store 
of  moral  earnestness  behind  it. 

Now  the  graduates  addressed  are  very  young 
men,  and  most  gloriously  blessed  with  inexpe 
rience,  but  they  have  as  a  rule  gone  far  enough  in 
their  lives  to  have  made  the  acquaintance  of  the 
obvious.  There  are  some  things  which  a  bacca 
laureate  sermon  should  take  for  granted.  It  is 
indiscreet,  for  instance,  to  tell  the  young  grad 
uates  that  they  stand  on  the  threshold  of  life  in 
the  presence  of  golden  opportunities.  The  truth 
of  that  statement  is  unimpeachable,  but  the  time 
has  now  come  when  it  should  be  conveyed  in  some 
other  way.  It  can  never  reach  any  human  mind 
168 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

in  its  original  package.  Besides,  there  is  no  risk 
in  assuming  that  the  young  graduate  knows  he  is 
standing  on  the  threshold  of  life  or  is  in  a  fair 
way  to  guess  at  it.  Youth  is  very  simple  and 
beautiful,  but  the  mind  is  not  a  virgin  forest 
even  at  twenty-one.  And  the  "moral  uplift" 
parts  of  the  baccalaureate  sermon  are  in  especial 
need  of  revision.  The  "battle  of  life"  should 
be  approached  with  caution  by  the  speaker  as 
well  as  by  the  graduate.  When  he  turns  solemnly 
on  him  and  makes  his  voice  shake  and  says, 
"Young  man,  gird  on  the  armor  of  righteousness 
and  go  forth.  Go  forward  and  not  back ;  up  and 
not  down ;  choose  the  better  instead  of  the  worse ; 
aim  high  and  not  low,"  there  is  no  young  man's 
mind  within  range.  Moral  uplift  is  a  splendid 
thing,  but  this  particular  derrick  is  worn  out. 
That  is  all. 

A  common  feature  of  baccalaureate  sermons  is 
the  advice  to  go  forth  and  purify  politics.  It 
is  rarely  any  more  specific  than  this.  Carry  high 
ideals  into  public  life  and  purge  away  iniquity. 
Is  there  a  young  man  living  who  does  not  know 
169 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

he  ought  to  do  it?  They  would  wake  up  *vith  a 
start  if  the  speaker  told  them  how  to  do  it,  but 
he  never  does.  Perhaps  it  is  too  much  to  expect 
that  a  man  should  specify.  But  he  can  at  least 
omit  the  generalities,  for  they  do  no  good. 
"Gentlemen  of  the  graduating  class,"  said  a 
baccalaureate  speaker,  "I  sympathize  with  you 
in  the  problems  that  are  facing  you.  Choose 
well,  choose  wisely,  choose  conscientiously,  live 
under  the  influence  of  high  ideals.  Live,  my 
brothers,  an  unselfish  life."  It  will  never  do. 
It  is  a  case  of  youth,  not  of  arrested  development. 
There  are  specific  shams  to  be  peeled  off  and 
specific  lies  to  be  nailed,  and  they  know  it.  Hack- 
neyism  is  hackneyism,  whether  it  is  the  work  of 
saint  or  sinner,  and  the  effect  of  it  is  to  put  to 
sleep  every  particle  of  truth  that  it  touches. 

It  should  be  assumed  that  a  college  student 
knows  in  a  general  way  that  a  high  moral  plane 
is  preferable  to  a  low  moral  plane.  If  he  goes 
wrong  it  will  not  be  from  ignorance  of  this  broad 
truth.  When  he  steps  across  the  threshold  he  is 
not  likely  to  meet  any  one  who  will  tell  him  in  so 
170 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

many  words  that  the  low  ideal  is  the  better. 
Every  one  is  most  deferential  to  the  high  moral 
principle.  In  politics  he  will  find  purifiers  every 
where.  So  long  as  he  confines  himself  to  the  gen 
eral  principle  he  will  have  the  whole  world  with 
him.  In  "the  battle  of  life"  both  sides  have  the 
same  moral  war  whoop.  That  is  a  troublesome 
point  about  which  baccalaureate  sermons  are  not 
explicit. 


171 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

II 

THE   SIGNIFICANCE    OF   FRESHMEN 

Now  THAT  September  has  come  again  freshmen 
are  the  fruit  in  season,  and  the  colleges  through 
out  the  land  are  fast  gathering  in  the  crop. 
Within  the  next  few  days  the  returns  will  all  be 
in  and  the  seven  hundred  and  ninet}7  odd  institu 
tions  that  divide  the  harvest  will  be  drawing  les 
sons  of  hope  or  discouragement  from  their  re 
spective  shares.  Meanwhile  the  palpitating 
freshman  takes  his  last  desperate  dig  at  the 
"horse"  quite  as  if  he  were  not  the  most  coveted 
of  objects.  Nor  is  it  likely  that  you  could  con 
vince  him  that  he  is  so  yearned  after.  He  is 
prone  rather  to  believe  that  he  is  the  victim  of  a 
discriminating  exclusiveness.  Did  he  know  that 
out  of  those  same  seven  hundred  and  ninety  odd 
institutions  in  these  United  States  a  probable  two 
hundred  would  not  have  the  heart  to  reject  him 
for  anything  short  of  dementia  or  debauchery,  he 
might  take  courage.  For  there  is  in  certain 
quarters  a  most  unappeasable  hankering  after 
It* 


RIGOURS    OF   EDUCATION 

freshmen,  as  our  commissioner  of  education  well 
knows.  Freshmen  must  be  had  on  any  terms. 
With  a  falling  off  in  freshmen  down  goes  the 
pulse  of  the  institution,  down  go  the  president's 
reputation  and  the  treasurer's  receipts  and  the 
professor's  salaries,  and  the  alumni's  hopes  and 
about  everything  else  that  it  is  the  purpose  of 
the  institution  to  keep  up.  This  being  so,  is  it 
not  better  that  the  bars  at  the  entrance  should  go 
down  instead?  Thus  reason  a  fair  number  of 
the  seven  hundred  and  ninety  at  the  behest  of 
self-preservation  in  the  stress  of  competition. 

Does  the  rejected  and  discomfited  freshman 
think  nobody  loves  him?  Let  him  listen  to  this: 
"One  of  the  most  discouraging  features  in  our 
system  of  higher  education  is  the  lack  of  any 
definite,  or,  in  fact,  in  a  large  number  of  states, 
the  lack  of  any  requirements  or  conditions  ex 
acted  of  institutions  when  authorized  to  confer 
degrees."  It  is  our  commissioner  of  education 
who  says  it.  He  calls  it  discouraging.  That  is 
his  way  of  looking  at  it.  When  a  commissioner 
of  education  is  discouraged,  the  unfortunate 
173 


OF 

UNIVERSITY 

or 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

freshman  may  come  by  his  own.  Discouraging, 
indeed!  It  means  the  warmest  and  most  wide 
spread  hospitality  to  freshmen  of  every  shade  of 
incapacity,  a  very  carnival  of  licensed  flunking. 
There  are  scores  of  colleges  that  are  fairly  starv 
ing  for  the  sight  of  them. 

So  those  apparently  irrelevant  figures  showing 
the  size  of  the  freshman  class  as  compared  with 
last  year  and  the  year  before,  and  the  year  before 
that  have  quite  a  dramatic  import  in  certain 
cases.  In  these  cases  the  criterion  of  the  presi 
dent's  policy  is  the  size  of  the  freshman  class. 
If  larger  than  last  year,  it  is  taken  to  mean  the 
progress  of  the  college,  more  gifts  for  dormi 
tories  and  athletic  fields ;  in  other  words,  physical 
growth,  and  that  is  the  only  kind  of  growth  that 
a  good  many  of  the  seven  hundred  and  ninety 
really  care  for.  To  ask  what  kind  of  freshmen 
they  are,  whether  they  are  well  qualified  students 
or  belated  children,  argues  a  suspicious  mind. 
In  these  cases  it  is  taken  as  the  index  figure  of 
advancing  culture.  It  is  the  result  of  a  well- 
planned  and  well-advertised  campaign  for  fresh- 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

men;  and  if  the  beaming  president  can  rise  at 
the  alumni  dinner  and  report  the  number  bigger 
than  last  year,  there  is  joy  intense  and  men  will 
tell  you  he  is  a  "hustler  and  no  mistake."  And 
under  present  conditions  to  be  pronounced  a 
"hustler"  by  members  of  the  alumni  is  for  cer 
tain  of  our  college  presidents  not  merely  a  matter 
of  pride  and  pleasure  but  a  sine  qua  non  of  their 
official  life. 

He  is  a  familiar  figure,  this  educational 
"hustler."  You  will  find  him  in  the  last  report  of 
the  Commissioner  of  Education  slightly  exagger 
ating  the  figures  of  attendance  for  his  own  par 
ticular  university.  You  will  see  him  again  in  the 
newspapers  next  summer  when  extracts  from  the 
baccalaureate  addresses  begin  to  trickle  in. 
"Young  men,  you  are  standing  on  the  threshold. 
Go  forward  and  not  back."  That  is  he,  gentle 
men  of  the  alumni,  and  you  will  meet  him  at  your 
annual  dinner,  where  he  will  urge  you  to  "keep  in 
touch"  with  university  ideals,  and  congratulate 
you  on  the  completion  of  the  new  grand  stand 
and  on  the  size  of  the  entering  class.  Great 
175 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

things  have  happened  under  him — an  era  of  ex 
pansion,  he  will  say — as  you  can  see  from  any 
recent  catalogue.  Twice  as  many  students  as 
last  year  and  half  as  much  Latin  and  Greek,  and 
but  for  him  there  would  be  no  summer  school  of 
horseshoeing,  no  butter  class  or  dental  depart 
ment,  no  marble  natatorium,  brownstone  dormi 
tory,  fish-hatchery  or  cremation  plant.  It  was 
he  who  said  the  other  day  that  the  university 
should  aim  at  nothing  but  the  training  of  special 
ists.  On  no  other  plan  can  the  university  grow 
big  so  fast,  and  rapid  bigness  is  of  course  the 
key  to  him  and  the  key  to  educational  progress — 
the  football  key — and  why  the  trustees  keep  him 
and  the  papers  print  him  and  the  millionaires  en 
dow  him,  and  the  faculty  waits  for  a  chance  to 
prick  him,  which  sometimes  comes.  Then  down 
he  goes,  but  not  for  long.  It  is  a  land  of  blessed 
chances  with  many  things  waiting  for  expansion. 
Out  of  nearly  eight  hundred  universities  surely 
some  would  like  to  swell.  And  the  popularis  aura 
is  always  blowing  somewhere  (and  is  especially 
fresh  upon  the  prairies)  and  to  all  punctured  and 
176 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

deflated  "hustlers"  democracy  is  kind.     He  will 
rise  again  if  only  to  run  for  Congress. 

All  of  which  contains  a  moral  for  any  one  that 
wants  it.  The  freshman  crop  per  se  has  no  more 
to  do  with  the  higher  education  than  the  water 
melon  or  the  pumpkin  crop.  In  the  case  of  a 
well-established  college,  able  to  hold  to  its  stand 
ards  through  thick  and  thin,  a  large  freshman 
class  is  a  hopeful  sign  for  the  college  and  the 
community  and  the  freshmen.  But  wherever  the 
big  class  is  due  to  methods  appropriate  to  the  ex 
ploitation  of  certain  brands  of  soap  or  cigarettes 
there  is  no  comfort  in  it  at  all.  It  is  a  mere  rally 
ing  of  customers  and  can  be  done  any  time  by 
marking  down  the  goods.  The  commercial  test 
applied  to  things  of  the  spirit  does  not  hold,  and 
a  boom  in  freshmen  taken  by  itself  is  sadly  am 
biguous.  For  the  freshman,  like  truth  and  good 
fortune  and  human  happiness,  is  altogether  a 
relative  matter. 


177 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

III 

THE   COEDUCATION    SCARE 

PROTESTS  of  certain  college  students  against  the 
spread  of  coeducation  have  for  some  reason 
aroused  very  little  sympathy  outside  those  insti 
tutions,  and  there  has  not  been  a  single  serious 
attempt  to  rescue  those  beleaguered  young  men. 
It  is  no  longer  possible  to  stir  people  up  about 
this  matter.  If  it  means  that  the  male  sex  is  go 
ing  to  be  dashed  to  pieces,  it  cannot  be  helped. 
The  great  majority  of  American  men  are  fatal 
ists  in  all  that  regards  the  woman's  movement. 
They  have  no  sex-patriotism,  and  they  feel  noth 
ing  but  an  idle  curiosity  when  they  see  a  brother 
struggling  against  odds.  Such  of  our  universi 
ties  as  have  let  young  women  in  must  take  the 
consequences.  Whether  the  men  organize  and 
fight,  or  take  to  the  woods,  or  stay  and  fraternize 
with  the  enemy  to  the  eternal  undoing  of  their 
manly  characters,  makes  not  the  slightest  dif 
ference  to  the  community  at  large.  Things  have 
come  to  such  a  pass  that  not  one  of  us  would  lift 
178 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

a  finger  on  their  behalf.  It  was  not  so  very  long 
ago  that  a  good  many  of  us  were  seriously 
alarmed.  What  has  so  brutalized  us  ? 

Recently,  when  a  university  professor  began 
to  bleat  most  piteously  over  the  danger  to  his 
manliness  from  the  fact  that  there  were  so  many 
women  near  him,  the  comments  of  the  press 
were  not  only  unsympathetic ;  they  were  actually 
derisive.  Their  general  tone  was,  Let  his  virility 
go.  Who  cares?  It  sounds  unfeeling,  but  it 
fairly  expresses  the  views  of  most  people  toward 
this  side  of  the  coeducation  question  to-day.  No 
one  wants  to  see  the  undergraduate  courses  of 
all  men's  or  women's  colleges  thrown  open  to 
both  sexes,  but  in  those  which  are  already  co 
educational  the  male  students  will  never  touch 
our  hard  hearts  by  referring  to  their  endangered 
manhood.  You  cannot  make  a  man  by  hiding 
him  from  women;  and  supposing  you  did  suc 
ceed  in  keeping  a  small  flame  of  manly  vigor  in 
him,  what  good  would  it  do?  As  soon  as  you  let 
him  go,  along  would  come  some  rough  and  bois 
terous  female  and  blow  it  out. 
179 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

This  is  too  hard  a  life  with  too  many  calls  on 
our  energies  for  us  to  be  forever  chaperoning  our 
own  sex.  If  a  man  says  he  does  not  want  women 
in  the  room  with  him  when  he  recites  at  a  quiz 
or  listens  to  a  lecture,  let  him  plead  shyness  or 
savagery,  or  the  decay  of  college  spirit,  or  any 
thing  under  the  sun  except  this  matter  of  im 
perilled  manhood.  Even  if  it  were  frankly  said 
that  it  was  unpleasant  to  have  women  outranking 
the  men  in  scholarship  or  carrying  off  the  class 
honors,  there  would  be  a  better  chance 
of  gaining  sympathy.  Every  one  can  under 
stand  the  feeling.  But  you  might  suppose 
from  certain  appeals  that  as  soon  as  women 
broke  into  a  college  the  men  all  took  to  piling 
up  fruits  and  flowers  and  birds  on  their  hat 
brims.  Damaging  as  woman  is,  she  is  not 
contagious.  And  sooner  or  later  she  must 
be  encountered  as  she  steams  along.  It  may 
be  a  good  thing  for  the  male  to  see  the 
woman's  movement  at  close  range  when  he  is 
very  young,  so  that  he  will  become  used  to  it — 
like  a  colt  to  a  railway  train.  For  life  has  no 
180 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

safeguards  in  this  matter,  and  the  world  is  not 
adjusted  to  its  softest  denizens. 

It  is  these  considerations  mainly  that  have 
made  us  so  indifferent  toward  those  of  our 
brothers  who  are  afraid  of  becoming  our  sisters. 
Of  this  much  we  may  be  certain :  The  true  con 
servative  is  not  the  man  whose  teeth  take  to  chat 
tering  at  every  change.  And  as  to  the  danger  of 
feminization  either  in  college  or  out,  there  are  a 
thousand  and  one  worse  things  to  worry  over. 
The  system  will  never  be  given  up  out  of  regard 
for  the  jeopardized  male.  The  important  thing 
is  its  effect  on  the  women  themselves,  but  that  is 
another  story. 


181 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

IV 

THE    TRAINED    WOMAN 

"No  LONGER  a  debatable  question,"  said  the  new 
president  of  a  woman's  college  in  an  inaugural 
address  on  the  propriety  of  a  college  education 
for  women.  Nevertheless  they  were  debating  it. 
Indeed  only  a  short  time  before  a  writer  on  the 
womanly  woman  had  inquired  fiercely,  "Are  wo 
men  to  be  flowers  or  vegetables  ?"  and  for  months 
afterwards  had  his  eye  on  the  sex,  bursting  out 
in  print  at  short  intervals.  Is  woman  growing 
gentler,  sweeter  ?  he  kept  asking,  Or  will  she  spoil 
on  our  hands?  He  watched  her  as  if  she  were  a 
watermelon.  And  even  now,  debatable  or  not, 
a  debate  is  going  on  somewhere  at  every  hour 
of  the  day  or  night.  Still  most  of  us  have  quieted 
down,  believing  that  thought  is  not  intrinsically 
bad  for  women  though  it  may  seem  at  present 
a  trifle  bizarre.  The  only  trouble  with  college 
women  is  their  pioneering  air.  It  seems  queer 
that  such  a  commonplace  thing  as  a  college  edu 
cation  should  confer  any  sense  of  intellectual  at- 
182 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

tainment,  but  there  are  still  some  strange  beings 
with  whom  the  consciousness  of  graduation  en 
dures  through  life.  As  well  expect  Stanley  to 
forget  that  he  had  been  to  Africa.  But  this  is 
fast  diminishing,  and  soon  a  girl  will  be  able  to 
go  to  college  without  the  risk  of  thinking  that 
she  is  doing  anything  remarkable.  That  sense 
of  being  remarkable  when  she  really  was  not  is 
what  did  the  mischief  a  few  years  ago. 

The  issue  between  peach-bloom  and  the  higher 
education  does  not  seem  vitally  important  when 
we  look  back  on  it  now.  Either  extreme  was  dis 
agreeable,  but  taking  them  all  in  all  there  was 
not  much  choice  between  the  portentous  new  wo 
man  and  the  fussy  old  man — the  sort  of  man  who 
trembled  for  the  peach-bloom  every  time  a  woman 
left  her  house,  and  piped  away  at  the  sad  old 
warning,  No  charm,  no  husband.  It  must 
have  been  exasperating  to  a  woman  to  hear  his 
constant,  "Steady  there,  not  too  rough.  Be  sweet 
if  you  would  be  married,"  when  she  was  doing 
nothing  worse  than  working  for  a  baccalaureate 
degree,  one  of  the  most  moderate  of  human 
183 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

achievements.  The  man  who  urged  women  to  be 
flowers,  not  vegetables,  feared  for  some  reason  a 
reversion  to  the  feminine  type  of  ancient  Gaul, 
and  quoted  Motley's  description  as  showing  how 
hard  it  must  be  to  manage  her,  "especially  when 
she  begins  gnashing  her  teeth,  her  neck  swollen, 
brandishing  her  vast  and  snowy  arms,  and  kick 
ing  with  her  heels,  to  deliver  her  fisticuffs,  like 
bolts  from  the  twisted  strings  of  a  catapult." 
Women  of  this  sort,  he  said,  "are  never  womanly, 
and  certainly  not  delightfully  feminine."  It  was 
a  voluminous  body  of  writing,  and  as  serious  as 
anything  we  ever  had.  There  was  a  cartography 
of  woman's  sphere  and  a  metric  system  for 
feminine  charm  and  a  lot  of  men  were  doing 
picket  duty  on  the  frontiers  of  their  own  sex  for 
fear  women  would  steal  their  beards ;  and  when 
ever  an  old  dry  twig  of  a  convention  snapped 
they  said  it  was  the  breaking  down  of  nature's 
wall.  It  carried  the  "problem"  into  places  where 
it  did  not  belong,  and  by  meeting  absurdity  with 
absurdity  encouraged  the  queer  leaders  of  the 
"movement"  to  be  queerer  yet,  and  meanwhile  it 
184 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

would  have  had  us  all  huddled  together  in  mortal 
dread  of  an  irruption  of  unsexed  giantesses. 

Since  then  most  of  these  timid  protestants 
have  perished,  crushed  to  death  by  their  huge 
wives,  some  say  (and  I  hope  it  is  true),  and  the 
prevailing  mood  nowadays  is  not  only  acquies 
cent  but  patronizing. 

Under  cultivation,  they  will  say,  women  often 
show  uncommon  presence  of  mind  and  sagacity. 
Feats  of  this  nature  are  recorded  with  great  care 
in  the  leading  periodicals  as  proof  that  the  ex 
periment  was  worth  making.  The  following  is 
not  only  typical  of  its  class,  but  is  so  significant 
in  itself  that  I  must  present  it  at  some  length. 
Two  trained  women  were  talking  about  the  con 
tinuous  advancement  of  a  mutual  friend,  when 
one  of  them  remarked  that  the  reason  why  she 
succeeded  was  "because  she  is  always  prepared 
for  emergencies  however  great " 

"Or  small,"  I  added. 

"You  are  thinking  of  the  magnet,"  was  the 
quick  reply. 

"The  magnet?"  I  questioned. 

"Yes,"  my  acquaintance  explained.    "One  day 

185 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

at  college,  one  of  the  other  girls  dropped  her  eye 
glasses  in  a  narrow  opening  between  two  walls. 
She  couldn't  reach  them,  and  had  very  nearly 
decided  that  they  must  remain  permanently  out 
of  reach." 

"But  they  didn't?"  I  asked  with  interest. 

"No,"  answered  my  acquaintance.  "Our  suc 
cessful  friend  happened  to  remember  that  their 
frame  was  made  of  steel.  She  went  to  the  phy 
sical  laboratory,  borrowed  a  magnet,  tied  a  string 
to  it,  and  lowering  it  carefully  into  the  opening, 
gravely  drew  up  the  eye-glasses." 

Happily,  this  delicious  story  was  recounted 
to  me  before,  in  the  course  of  my  investigation, 
I  had  visited  any  colleges.  At  each  one  of  the 
many  girls'  colleges  in  all  parts  of  the  country 
to  which  I  went  during  the  winter  and  spring,  I 
repeated  it  to  some  person  connected  with  the 
particular  institution;  and  invariably  that  per 
son  exclaimed,  "How  exactly  like  a  college  girl !" 

The  significant  thing,  of  course,  is  the  writer's 
surprise  at  it,  and  this  undercurrent  of  cynical 
astonishment  runs  all  through  that  large  and 
peculiar  portion  of  the  press  which  is  devoted  to 
women's  interests.  Groups  of  women  who  un 
aided  have  earned  enough  to  pay  their  board, 
who  can  support  themselves  by  their  pen,  who 
have  weathered  education  without  loss  of  good 
186 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

looks,  who  have  sat  on  platforms,  but  are  now 
sitting  in  charming  homes,  who  hold  offices  in 
clubs,  successful  mothers,  and  efficient  wives, 
who  can  write  novels  nevertheless,  women  who 
have  led  "the  literary  life"  and  still  are  by  no 
means  shattered,  form  a  necessary  part  of  any 
illustrated  periodical.  It  would  seem  that  intelli 
gence  had  never  come  to  beings  who  less  ex 
pected  it.  How  must  they  have  rated  themselves 
in  the  past?  When  a  woman  achieves  anything 
nowadays,  the  others  seem  to  write  of  her  as  if  she 
were  a  gorilla  eating  with  a  spoon.  Yet  I  could 
tell  tales  of  cunning  far  ahead  of  the  anecdote 
above  quoted — deeds  of  the  barbarous  and  un 
trained,  deeds  of  the  woman  with  pins  between  her 
teeth,  deeds  of  any  woman,  things  done  with  a 
man,  with  a  hat,  with  an  income,  with  no  income, 
proving  that  if  this  college  girl  was  remarkable, 
the  doings  of  every  other  girl  are  almost  incredi 
ble.  It  is  held,  and  rightly  held,  that  this  useful 
friend  to  man  should  be  educated,  but  that  is  no 
reason  for  disparaging  what  nature  had  already 
done  all  by  herself.  Sex  patriots  should  remem- 
181 


RIGOURS    OF   EDUCATION 

her  that  even  at  the  very  start  she  was  human, 
cephalic  index  77  to  88,  cranial  capacity  consid 
erable,  mistress  of  herself,  and  feeling  more  or 
less  at  home  with  the  law  of  gravitation. 


188 


RIGOURS   OF   EDUCATION 


EDUCATIONAL    EMOTIONS 

THE  discussion  of  educational  topics  in  the  press 
presents  some  interesting  contrasts.  Here,  for 
example,  are  two  college  presidents  who  simul 
taneously  express  their  views  as  to  the  present 
state  of  the  higher  education  in  this  country. 
One  sees  nothing  but  progress  and  the  other  noth 
ing  but  decline,  and  each  makes  out  a  pretty 
good  case  for  his  own  temperament.  Toward  the 
close  of  the  last  century,  says  the  buoyant  one, 
there  were  only  nine  colleges,  and  now  we  can 
scarcely  count  them.  Though  some  of  them  are 
small,  "most  of  them  are  eager  and  enthusiastic 
to  serve  humanity."  There  are  fifteen  million 
students  in  school  and  college  and  half  a  million 
teachers.  Millions  upon  millions  of  dollars  are 
spent  each  year  in  education.  Studies  are  now 
pursued  that  were  never  heard  of  in  the  old  times. 
Everywhere  you  turn  there  is  something  to  glory 
in,  and  the  "bare  recitals  of  the  barest  facts  are 
full  of  meaning."  Put  in  your  thumb  and  pull 
189 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

out  a  plumb  and  spend  the  rest  of  your  days  in 
hurrahing.  The  other  man  soon  puts  a  stop  to 
that.  Things  are  worse  than  ever,  he  says.  Col 
lege  education  is  on  the  wrong  track  and  only 
breeds  athletes  and  spendthrifts.  Literary  am 
bitions  are  no  longer  entertained.  "Academic 
distinction  has  become  a  matter  of  brawn  and 
bulldog  courage  rather  than  Greek  and  calculus." 
"Harvard  freshmen  cannot  write  English,  and 
every  college  president  meditates  an  article  on 
the  growing  illiteracy  of  the  college  student." 
"You  can  hardly  pick  up  a  paper  without  finding 
items  headed  'College  Ruffianism,'  'Academic 
Sluggers,'  etc."  "College  luxury  is  parasitic  and 
non-educational."  "The  undergraduate  who 
cannot  be  made  to  pay  for  good  instruction  is 
lodged  like  a  prince,  indulges  in  expensive  pleas 
ures  and  wastes  far  more  than  would  suffice  to 
give  his  instructor  the  livelihood  which  he  de 
serves."  In  the  meanwhile,  "the  full  professor 
in  a  New  York  State  college  gets  an  average 
salary  equal  to  that  of  a  railroad  engineer;  an 
assistant  professor  the  same  as  a  fireman,  while 
190 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

an  instructor  is  rewarded  equally  with  a  brake- 
man." 

The  greater  part  of  what  has  been  published 
on  educational  subjects  for  some  time  past  is  of 
this  character,  and  we  outsiders  who  would  like  to 
get  at  the  truth  are  having  a  bad  time  of  it. 
But  this  much  we  know:  Whatever  the  system 
may  be,  if  it  is  responsible  for  making  men  talk 
like  this  there  is  something  the  matter  with  it. 
There  is  little  to  choose  between  these  two  views. 
It  is  not  good  for  a  generation's  health  to  think 
too  much  about  its  enormous  strides.  For  whose 
sake  are  we  advertising?  The  educator  is  apt  to 
catch  this  trick  from  the  writer  on  industrial 
progress.  He  counts  up  heads  as  if  they  were 
steel  rails  for  export,  and  computes  the  cost  of 
plant  to  tickle  us  with  the  sound  of  millions. 
While  under  his  spell  we  forget  that  it  makes  the 
least  difference  what  kind  of  heads  they  are  or 
what  they  are  filled  with.  A  larger  entering 
class  than  ever  before,  gentlemen  of  the  alumni, 
and  a  new  endowment  for  the  swimming  tank, 
to  be  known  as  the  John  Henry  Jones  swimming 
191 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

tank.  What  can  these  preoccupied  persons  do 
for  education?  They  lead  nowhere.  They  are 
behind  with  the  band  reporting  progress  on  a  big 
trombone.  If  there  were  a  dead  silence  on  these 
points  for  the  next  ten  years  the  higher  educa 
tion  would  not  slow  up  in  the  least.  There  are 
other  ways  of  growing  than  of  growing  fat,  and 
the  over-emphasis  on  mere  size  has  been  carried  to 
absurd  lengths. 

But  if  wealth  and  numbers  are  no  fair  test  in 
this  matter  of  outdoing  ancestors,  it  is  just  as 
unwise  to  spread  the  belief  that  we  are  breeding 
out  into  illiterate  prize-fighters  and  luxurious 
parasites.  The  questions  of  college  athletics 
will  never  be  answered  by  a  man  who  sees  items 
on  "College  Ruffianism,  etc.,"  in  almost  every 
newspaper  he  takes  up,  for  these  items  are  very 
rare.  It  is  a  strictly  personal  hallucination. 
And  as  for  luxury,  the  man  who  has  money  to 
spend  will  spend  it  at  college.  There  is  no  reason 
why  social  differences  should  stop  at  the  college 
grounds.  We  impose  no  vows  of  poverty.  It  is 
just  as  well  that  the  college  should  not  be  too 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

unlike  the  world,  since  the  graduate  is  bound  to 
go  there.  If  we  would  make  it  a  monastery  we 
should  not  let  him  out.  And  were  the  universities 
of  sixty  years  ago  so  very  different?  Men  had 
less  to  spend,  but  they  let  fly  what  they  had,  and 
from  the  sad  tales  of  Oxford  which  date  from  that 
time,  did  the  princeliest  kind  of  things  on  credit. 
Talking  along  these  respective  lines  is  not  help 
ful.  It  is  less  the  result  of  thought  than  of  two 
sets  of  antithetic  emotions.  With  one  class  of 
writers  the  human  being  is  lost  in  the  machinery. 
The  others  merely  feel  badly  and  pick  out  a  few 
things  to  account  for  it. 


193 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

VI 

INNER    CIRCLES 

THERE  was  an  inner  circle,  I  understand,  within 
which  the  late  Professor  Max  Muller  was  re 
garded  as  a  very  cheap  person.  Your  truly 
learned  man  looked  on  him  as  an  epicure  might 
look  on  a  quick-lunch  counter.  No  doubt  his 
critics  have  taken  the  right  measure  of  him. 
Truth  for  its  own  sake  was  not  always  the 
master  of  his  motives.  Yet  he  was  to  blame 
not  for  popularizing  but  for  sometimes  popu 
larizing  in  the  wrong  way.  Inner  circles 
often  lose  sight  of  this  difference,  and 
throw  out  a  member  the  minute  they  catch  him 
meeting  the  world  half  way.  Huxley  is  not 
thought  much  of  in  some  inner  circles,  though 
the  stimulus  he  gave  probably  did  more  for 
science  in  the  long  run  than  the  labors  of  the 
very  inmost  and  least  intelligent  drudge  that 
ever  snubbed  a  layman.  It  is  well  enough  to 
distrust  the  general  run  of  popularizers — the 
men  who  no  sooner  learn  a  commonplace  of 
194 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

science  than  they  dilute  it  and  pass  it  around — 
but  to  taboo  a  man  merely  because  he  has  a  word 
for  us  outsiders  is  hardly  fair.  People  who  have 
had  anything  to  do  with  inner  circles  know  them 
to  be  beset  with  awful  spiritual  dangers,  of 
which  a  certain  unworldly  snobbery  is  not  the 
least.  "Here's  to  Mathematics;  may  she  never 
be  prostituted  to  any  human  use."  Shall  a  man 
dig  all  his  days  and  still  be  in  plain  sight  of  the 
crowd?  It  is  not  for  the  like  of  us  to  hobnob 
with  a  scientist  on  the  surface.  It  is  enough  to 
stand  reverently  at  the  mouth  of  the  hole  and 
know  that  Professor  So-and-so  went  down  thirty 
years  ago  and  has  never  since  been  seen,  or  at 
most  put  an  ear  to  the  ground  on  the  chance  of 
hearing  him  root.  It  may  be  a  necessary  isola 
tion,  but  sometimes  it  is  not.  That  is  the  dark 
side  of  this  question  of  the  inner  circle. 

There  are  degrees  of  technicality,  and  within 
certain  limits  there  is  a  choice.  Some  of  the  least 
important  members  of  the  inner  circle  are  the 
greatest  sticklers  for  exclusiveness.  They  want 
to  make  the  profanum  vulgus  scuttle  at  the  sight 
195 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

of  them,  and  if  they  ever  throw  a  word  to  a  poor 
ignorant  outside  body  it  almost  fells  him  to  the 
earth.  A  recent  writer  on  criminology,  for  ex 
ample,  has  some  common-sense  ideas  on  the  sub 
ject  of  Lombroso's  criminal  type,  holding  that 
what  Lombroso  cited  as  marks  of  the  criminal 
temperament  were  merely  characteristics  of  the 
race  and  the  social  class  to  which  the  criminal 
belongs.  But  this  is  how  the  critic  states  his 
conclusion:  "Thus  each  exceptional  subject  ac 
centuates  himself  along  lines  of  transmissible  race 
eccentricities  to  which  he  alone  proves  true,  and 
not  to  any  exceptionally  vague  physio-psycholog 
ical  archetype."  An  enterprising  sociologist 
will  take  the  simplest  kind  of  a  notion,  and  so  pile 
on  the  socio-politico,  psycho-physico,  zoo-biolog- 
ico,  pseudo-scientific  adjectives  that  no  one  will 
dare  look  for  it.  Scientific  terms  there  must  be, 
but  why  use  them  in  speaking  of  familiar  mat 
ters  for  which  plain  words  will  do  as  well? 
Whenever  you  can  turn  one  of  these  tremendous 
socio-bio-psychical  passages  back  into  simple 
phrases  without  sacrificing  the  sense,  it  is  a 
196 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

pretty  sure  sign  that  science  is  not  to  blame  for 
it,  but  the  vices  of  the  inner  circle.  To  give 
another  illustration  from  the  science  of  crim 
inology.  Historical  criminology,  the  writer  tells 
us,  "is  bio-zoological  in  inception  and  detail,  and 
historical  as  to  data  and  outline,  allying  itself 
with  predisposing  causes  inherent  in  the  race  and 
linking  itself  with  primal  conditions  through  a 
long  chain  of  antecedent  biological  and  anthro 
pological  sequences,  following  the  well-known 
law  of  homogeneous  to  heterogeneous,  but  with 
ever-increasing  distinctness." 

It  is  not  science  that  makes  a  man  write  like 
this.  It  is  the  hauteur  of  the  inner  circle.  The 
thought  does  not  come  to  him  in  that  way,  and 
there  is  not  the  least  need  of  these  terrible  words. 
Science  puts  up  no  barriers  of  preciosity.  It 
is  not  the  object  of  science  that  thought  should 
baffle  its  pursuers,  even  though  these  pursuers  be 
of  low  degree.  It  is  the  same  old  thing  that 
Shakespeare  and  Moliere  used  to  joke  about.  We 
hear  little  of  it  now,  chiefly  because  there  are  no 
Shakespeares  or  Molieres  to  see  the  difference 
197 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

between  truth  for  truth's  sake  and  technicality 
for  the  sake  of  the  inner  circle.  It  would  do  no 
harm  if  members  of  an  inner  circle  were  a  little 
more  tactful  in  dealing  with  the  outsider.  There 
are  times  when  common  humanity  requires  that 
a  tomato  shall  be  called  a  tomato,  and  not  a 
Lycopersicum  esculentum.  That  is  all  we  mean, 
and  it  is  no  insult  to  science  to  say  so.  Mr. 
Darwin  acted  on  that  principle  without  losing 
caste.  To  that  extent  he  was  a  popularizer, 
though  he  was  as  far  removed  from  Professor 
Max  Miiller  as  he  was  from  the  snobs  of  the 
arcanum  or  the  ordinary  young  Eleusinian  dude. 
Not  to  breathe  a  word  against  those  good  men 
who  have  worked  so  hard  and  specialized  so  long 
that  they  have  forgotten  the  language.  They 
have  planted  telegraph  stations  on  the  frontiers 
of  science,  but  the  wires  are  down  and  they  can 
only  make  signs  to  their  brethren.  That  is  a 
matter  of  natural  limitations,  not  of  professional 
pedantry.  But  inner  circles  abound  in  euphuists 
who  use  words  as  if  they  were  insignia  of  rank, 
queer  little  masters  of  ceremonies  and  court  eti- 
198 


RIGOURS    OF    EDUCATION 

quette  whose  services  to  science  are  not  worth  the 
price  of  their  humanity.  They  should  take  a 
course  in  Mother  Goose.  Bigger  men  than  they 
have  been  quite  generally  understood.  The 
native  idiom  is  worth  any  man's  while,  and  it  is 
a  mistake  to  assume  that  it  is  intended  for  liars 
alone.  As  to  the  popularizer,  a  democracy  must 
have  him ;  but  any  neo-bio-psychical  person  who 
has  never  sinned  against  simplicity  is  entitled  to 
throw  the  first  stone. 


199 


PART    VI 

ON    CERTAIN    FORMS    OF 
PEDANTRY 


THE   DRIER    CRITICISM 

THERE  is  a  certain  unfortunate  class  of  persons 
who,  whenever  a  new  novel  of  any  importance 
comes  out,  must  fall  to  and  examine  it  for  germs 
and  seeds  and  variations,  and  classify  it  accord 
ing  to  purpose,  structure  and  philosophic  trend. 
Five  or  six  of  them  broke  out  all  at  once  not  long 
ago,  some  of  them  writing  books  and  others 
magazine  articles.  As  a  usual  thing  they  have  a 
theory  of  development  to  prove.  One  of  them 
will  tell  you  the  exact  relation  between  the  modern 
novel  and  the  mediseval  fabliaux,  on  what  date 
the  novel  of  purpose  started,  and  how  romanti- 
200 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

cism  and  realism  alternately  rose  and  fell.  An 
other  proves  by  a  hundred  instances  that  the 
development  of  the  novel  follows  the  usual  law 
of  human  expression,  proceeding  from  the  simple 
to  the  complex,  the  physical  and  external  to  the 
spiritual  and  invisible.  A  third  says  the  whole 
thing  is  a  department  of  biology,  and  is  very 
enthusiastic  about  the  study  of  hybridization  and 
"that  blending  of  slightly  divergent  individual 
ities  which  takes  place  whenever  a  new  genera 
tion  is  launched."  By  these  means,  he  says,  you 
can  explain  Landor,  Heine  and  Rossetti.  Fancy 
leaving  those  three  men  unexplained.  A  fourth, 
who,  though  a  woman,  is  made  of  the  same  stern 
stuff,  has  studied  a  thousand  novels  in  which  the 
story  is  told  in  the  first  person — "I-novels"  she 
calls  them,  on  the  authority  of  Spielhagen's  Ich- 
Roman — and  is  thus  able  to  make  some  perfectly 
trustworthy  generalizations.  Her  conclusion  is 
that  the  structural  importance  of  the  narrator  is 
a  most  noteworthy  characteristic  of  the  I-novel. 
This  is  what  is  known  as  the  objective  or 
scientific  literary  criticism.  The  dryness  of  it  is 
201 


ON    CERTAIN   PEDANTRIES 

the  dry  light  of  truth.  No  ordinary  man  dare 
question  the  facts  or  principles  that  it  sets  forth, 
for  the  learning  and  industry  that  go  to  make  it 
are  beyond  all  doubt.  But  there  is  one  thing 
about  it  that  must  strike  any  one  who  now  and 
then  takes  pleasure  in  a  book.  These  people 
lose  a  good  deal  of  fun.  Perhaps  they  were  never 
the  kind  of  people  to  have  fun ;  but  if  they 
started  with  a  capacity  for  it  it  certainly  is  all 
gone  now.  Books  to  them  are  not  the  means  of 
enjoyment  as  we  understand  the  term.  They  are 
just  so  much  material  to  tabulate  and  classify. 
A  new  book,  if  it  is  good  for  anything,  is  merely 
a  new  job,  and  they  are  overworked  already. 
They  cannot  simply  read  it,  but  must  wearily  in 
quire  (1)  "What  relation  does  it  bear  to  other 
forms  of  human  expression?"  (2)  "What  are  its 
specific  claims  to  eminence?"  and  ($)  "What 
tendencies  does  it  markedly  reveal?"  Where  we 
common  folk  may  go  a-fishing  they  have  to 
hold  some  kind  of  an  ichthyological  inquest. 
I  do  not  mean  that  the  scientific  interest  neces 
sarily  shuts  out  the  other  kind.  Some  men  are 
202 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

big  enough  for  both.   But  it  happens  that  a  good 
many  of  these  scientific  novel  readers  are  not. 

You  cannot  attribute  it  altogether  to  the 
method.  If  a  man's  work  leaves  him  with  no  more 
bowels  than  a  logarithm  it  is  likely  he  was  not 
very  well  endowed  at  the  start.  Taine  chased 
theories  of  development  and  betrayed  the  scien 
tific  motive  in  many  ways.  Yet  his  writings 
bore  on  them  the  distinctive  marks  of  an  indi 
vidual  mind.  He  had  enthusiasm,  prejudices  and 
other  human  flaws.  He  caught  the  spirit  of  what 
he  wrote  about,  and  he  was  ten  times  as  literary 
as  he  was  biological.  So  he  wrote  literary  criti 
cism.  You  need  not  be  an  expert  in  structure, 
descent  and  hybridization  to  be  a  judge  of  books 
any  more  than  you  need  be  an  anthropologist  to 
be  a  judge  of  human  nature.  In  the  school  of 
drier  criticism  anything  like  a  pleasant  intimacy 
with  a  book  is  unknown.  It  is  as  if  one  should 
come  near  enough  to  his  friends  only  to  ascertain 
what  their  facial  angles  were  and  whether  they 
were  dolichocephalic.  And  when  you  think  over 
the  books  you  like  you  will  find  that  what  these 
203 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

scholiasts  note  in  them  are  precisely  the  things 
that  do  not  count.  They  are  pleased  (if  we  may 
apply  the  term  pleasure  to  their  scholarly  emo 
tion)  by  the  resemblances,  while  it  is  the  unlike- 
nesses  that  fascinate  you,  unless,  perhaps,  you 
mean  to  make  your  doctor's  degree  by  a  disserta 
tion  on  the  structural  unity  of  the  Ich-Roman. 
Yet  it  is  a  safe  bit  of  practical  advice  to  any  man 
that  if  he  has  in  his  possession  a  book  whose  ele 
ments  can  all  be  thoroughly  classified  and  traced 
to  their  sources  he  should  at  once  burn  it. 

How  does  it  happen  that  these  men  are  on  such 
formal,  even  strained  relations  with  literature? 
Perhaps  there  was  a  time  when  they  liked  it,  but 
they  had  to  teach  it  or  show  their  knowledge  of  it, 
and  a  grim  pedagogical  sense  of  duty  now  drives 
them  to  their  task.  They  bother  with  no  ele 
ment  of  it  which  they  cannot  thoroughly  ex 
plain.  It  is  only  the  obvious  that  they  are  after, 
They  are  bound  forever  to  the  abominable  drudg 
ery  of  establishing  an  inductive  basis  for  the  well 
known.  And  literary  criticism  is  net  literary  at 
all.  It  is  compounded  of  science  and  system  and 
evolution  and  ennui. 

204 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 
II 

PAINSTAKING    ILLITERACY 

WE  are  careless  enough  in  our  use  of  words, 
Heaven  knows,  but  the  efforts  of  a  recent  writer 
to  set  us  right  only  make  us  hug  our  sins  the 
tighter.  He  is  a  sarcastic  person  who  is  alter 
nately  amused  and  dismayed  by  the  slips  of  other 
people.  Here  are  some  of  the  things  that  he 
considers  slips.  Speaking  of  someone  who  used 
a  wrong  word  on  a  certain  occasion,  he  says: 
"The  incident  occurred  in  a  'suburbs'  of  a  large 
Pennsylvania  city,  but  the  people  out  there  are 
calling  it  a  'suburb'  yet."  Again,  on  running 
across  the  expression  "a  case  of  horse  sense"  in  a 
newspaper,  he  said  he  tried  "to  think  of  some 
instance  where  horse  sense  had  ever  been  put  up 
in  a  crate,  box  or  other  package  that  is  usually 
understood  to  be  a  'case.' '  Another  newspaper 
said  something  about  the  responsibility  of  editors 
in  the  conduct  of  their  journals.  Their  conduct 
would  be  improved,  he  thought,  if  the  editors 
"were  more  cautious  in  conduct-ing  them."  "The 
205 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

government  of  the  tongue"  was  another  expres 
sion  that  puzzled  him,  but  after  reading  down 
the  page  he  found  that  the  author  referred  to 
the  " govern-in g"  of  the  tongue.  In  conclusion, 
he  says  he  has  a  notebook  full  of  similar  in 
stances. 

There  is  no  need  of  mentioning  the  man's 
name.  He  bore  traces  of  respectability,  and  may 
have  been  already  punished  enough  by  a  return 
ing  sense  of  shame.  But  could  anything  be 
worse?  "Suburb"  has  been  in  good  standing  for 
hundreds  of  years  before  and  since  Milton  wrote 
of  "the  suburb  of  their  straw-built  citadel."  The 
pedant  cannot  forget  his  Latin  primer  and  that 
"s"  in  "urbs."  The  race  has  chosen  to  forget. 
The  race  is  always  doing  things  to  shock  the 
pedant.  As  to  "conduct"  and  "case,"  you  would 
not  suppose  the  long-established  ambiguities  of 
those  two  words  could  come  as  a  surprise  to  any 
one.  But  here  is  an  instance  of  it,  and  it  finds  its 
way  into  print.  Suddenly  it  dawns  on  this  man 
that  "conduct"  sometimes  means  something  be 
sides  behavior,  and  that  "case"  does  not  always 
206 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

refer  to  a  packing  box.  He  is  ready  at  any  time 
to  crush  a  lawyer  who  speaks  of  his  "conduct  of 
a  case"  with  a  satirical  inquiry  as  to  whether  he 
has  in  mind  the  demeanor  of  twenty-four  bottles 
of  beer.  And  why  not  "government  of  the 
tongue"  as  well  as  "government  of  colonial  de 
pendencies,"  or  anything  else?  It  would  be  ab 
surd  to  say  anything  about  this  foolish  matter  if 
it  did  not  represent  the  attitude  of  a  rather  for 
midable  class  of  persons.  The  fine  flagrancy  of 
this  particular  instance  is,  to  be  sure,  somewhat 
exceptional  in  print,  unless  it  be  among  the  let 
ters  to  the  editor.  But  it  is  not  at  all  unusual 
in  conversation.  In  fact,  nothing  speaks  so  well 
for  the  kindly  forbearance  of  the  race  as  the 
number  of  these  people  and  the  large  proportion 
of  them  that  die  natural  deaths. 

If  in  talking  with  a  man  like  this  you  said 
something  about  a  "standpoint,"  he  would  ask 
you  if  you  meant  a  "point  of  view."  If  you 
asked,  "Is  to-morrow  Tuesday?"  he  would  say, 
"To-morrow  will  be  Tuesday."  Some  members 
of  his  family  would  probably  pronounce  "pretty" 
207 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

to  rhyme  with  "petty."  All  would  no  doubt  take 
infinite  pains  to  make  "tyoors"  of  all  their 
"tures,"  and  if  any  of  them  were  colloquial 
enough  to  say,  "Don't  you  know,"  the  "t"  in 
"don't"  would  be  spat  out  so  earnestly  that  you 
would  dodge.  But  "don't"  and  "can't"  are  con 
cessions  to  the  lax  manners  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
race.  "Do  not  you"  is  the  thing  for  true  refine 
ment.  It  is  a  very  gold  toothpick  of  a  phrase,  a 
sort  of  literary  pocket  comb. 

The  incorrect  pedantries  of  conversation 
would  fill  many  volumes.  They  are  not  the  least 
among  the  numerous  annoyances  of  education. 
For  the  verbal  prig  is  something  of  a  tyrant, 
and  the  triple-plate  armor  of  his  self-compla 
cency  makes  him  assassin-proof.  There  is  no  con 
vincing  him  that  his  is  a  special  case  of  illiteracy, 
all  the  worse  for  being  so  deliberately  wrought 
out.  His  quarrel  is  with  the  luxuriance  of  the 
language.  He  hates  the  liberality  of  our  en 
dowment.  The  activities  of  words  must  be  cur 
tailed.  They  must  be  disembowelled,  salted, 
skinned  and  dried.  And  if  we  unbend  a  little  in 
208 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

pronunciation  or  elide  our  words,  as  did  the 
Greeks,  or  fall  in  with  the  sanctioned  careless 
ness  of  the  leaders  of  our  race,  he  is  for  keeping 
us  in  after  school.  He  is  a  cold-blooded  disin- 
heritor  of  words,  an  apostle  of  rigidity  and  a 
traitor  to  the  best  traditions  a  people  has.  The 
language  needs  no  beadle — not  even  on  the  Bow 
ery.  Order  is  not  maintained  by  these  trivial  re 
straints.  They  incite,  rather,  to  open  rebellion 
all  along  the  line. 


209 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

III 

THE  HAND  OF  PROVIDENCE 

HERE  is  a  thoughtful  and  apparently  pious 
writer  who  is  disturbed  by  what  he  calls  the 
naturalistic  method  of  interpreting  history, 
meaning  by  this  the  reference  of  great  historical 
movements  to  natural  causes.  It  seems  to  him 
that  Providence  is  not  receiving  his  fair  share  of 
credit  for  what  has  come  to  pass.  "Has  the  bark 
of  human  civilization  sailed  so  swiftly  and  pros 
perously  without  a  steersman?"  he  asks.  He  in 
stances  the  Greeks.  Suppose  they  had  been 
placed  in  Scandinavia  or  Iceland,  "would  not 
their  genius  have  been  wholly  wasted?"  and 
Rome — placed  "just  in  the  precise  situation 
where  it  had  the  greatest  scope  for  the  exercise 
of  its  gifts."  Then  the  timeliness  of  certain  men 
and  things.  Philip  and  Alexander  "appeared 
precisely  at  the  fitting  moment  in  Greek  and 
Macedonian  history"  ;  Rome's  power  developed  at 
exactly  the  right  time,  late  enough  to  avoid  in 
terfering  with  the  original  culture  of  Greece, 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

early  enough  to  be  on  hand  for  the  administra 
tion  of  the  east;  the  fall  of  the  eastern  empire 
"was  timed  with  the  nicety  of  clockwork,  to  take 
place  at  the  very  hour  when  it  could  unfailingly 
give  rise"  to  certain  momentous  consequences ; 
and  race  after  race  were  constantly  appearing 
on  the  stage  at  the  "precise  period  when  they 
were  required."  There  is  much  more  to  the  same 
effect. 

What  can  a  man  be  thinking  of  to  tax  his 
torians  or  anybody  else  with  remissness  in  this 
respect  ?  As  if  we  lacked  for  human  explanation 
of  the  plans  of  Providence !  It  is  about  the  most 
copious  thing  in  the  language.  Our  school  books 
on  history  are  full  of  it,  and  as  to  the  hand  of 
Providence  in  current  politics,  there  is  hardly  an 
orator  who  is  not  versed  in  this  colossal  palmis 
try.  If  Mr.  Bryan  had  been  elected,  would  there 
not  have  been  hundreds  to  show  the  hand  of 
Providence  running  through  all  creation  with  a 
Populistic  plan  ?  If  the  better  class  of  historians 
to-day  say  less  about  the  hand  of  Providence 
than  their  predecessors  it  is  a  thing  to  be  thank- 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

ful  for.  It  argues  a  becoming  modesty  and  a 
kindlier  view  of  the  intelligence  of  their  readers. 
The  method  followed  by  the  writer  I  have  quoted 
is  common  enough.  Great  Britain  and  Russia, 
he  says,  are  to  be  the  main  channels  through 
which  the  civilization  of  Europe  is  to  be  spread 
over  most  of  the  world.  This  was  in  the  plan, 
and  if  anything  in  the  past  had  turned  out 
differently  it  would  have  spoilt  the  whole  scheme. 
Under  other  conditions  England  could  never 
have  become  the  powerful  state  she  is.  He  adds : 

"Familiar  facts  are  always  liable  to  be  taken 
as  matters  of  course,  and  the  fact  that  England 
is  an  island  is  one  of  these.  But  if  we  consider 
the  physical  causes  which  have  made  the  island, 
we  shall  perceive  how  easily  everything  might 
have  been  other  than  it  is.  The  narrow  strait 
that  separates  France  and  England  is  geologi 
cally  of  recent  origin,  and  it  is  not,  so  to  speak, 
a  permanent  feature.  .  .  .  The  elevation  of  the 
land  is  very  moderate  and  ...  a  slight  further 
depression  would  leave  only  a  few  scattered 
mountain  islets  of  these  kingdoms.  Again  the 
situation  was  exactly  the  right  one.  Farther 
south,  off  the  coast  of  Spain  or  north  or  west  in 
the  Atlantic,  the  history  must  have  been  wholly 
different." 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

There  is  no  stopping  these  people  when  the 
frondering  fit  is  on  them.  Providence,  to  their 
minds,  is  always  having  hairbreadth  escapes. 
Suppose  Remus  had  killed  Romulus.  Remus,  be 
ing  a  different  sort  of  man,  might  not  have 
founded  the  city.  There  would  have  been  no 
Roman  empire,  and  the  face  of  history  would 
have  been  changed.  The  thing  is  endless.  The 
best  way  is  not  to  begin,  or  if  there  must  be 
speculation  about  what  would  have  changed  the 
face  of  history,  to  do  it  all  up  at  once  by  suppos 
ing  there  were  no  human  race  at  all.  Why  try 
and  catalogue  all  the  things  that  did  not  happen  ? 
Surely  Providence  was  no  more  thoughtful  when 
he  made  Great  Britain  of  just  the  right  size  and 
shape  than  when  he  made  men  right  side  up. 
Yet  writers  who  would  never  think  of  marvelling 
at  the  beneficent  design  that  kept  us  from  going 
through  life  head  downwards  feel  the  deepest 
emotion  because  the  Angles  and  Saxons  did  not 
take  ship  for  Patagonia,  and  the  Greeks  were 
not  exposed  to  a  set  of  influences  that  would  have 
turned  them  out  Dutchmen.  Some  writers  go 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

almost  as  deep  in  this  philosophy  as  their  Mother 
Goose  prototype — "if  the  moon  were  made  of 
green  cheese,  and  the  sea  were  made  of  ink."  It 
is  almost  an  automatic  philosophy  and  the  least 
shove  makes  its  wheels  go  round.  For  what  is  it 
but  the  proclamation  of  the  present  as  the 
product  of  the  past  and  the  damnation  of  a  lot 
of  might-have-beens  that  you  invent  yourself? 

Besides,  it  is  bad  manners  to  be  constantly 
praising  Providence  because  he  knew  what  he 
was  about.  Some  things  should  be  taken  for 
granted.  It  was  meant  that  man  should  walk, 
but  he  need  not  be  forever  thanking  Heaven  for 
putting  legs  on  him,  though  these  legs  are  ad 
justed  "with  the  nicety  of  clockwork"  and  are 
as  neat  an  adaptation  of  means  to  end  as  the 
appearance  of  Julius  Caesar  just  in  the  nick  of 
time  and  the  planting  of  the  Phoenicians  by  the 
seashore.  There  is  no  sense  in  selecting  just  one 
set  of  things  to  compliment.  Nor  does  the  plan 
need  any  apologists.  And  it  is  a  merciful  thing 
that  we  know  less  than  they  do  about  the  plot, 
since  we  are  bound  to  read  the  story.  The  moon 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

was  still  there,  though  the  donkey  drank  it  up  in 
the  puddle.  And  it  is  the  same  way  with  the 
mystery  when  it  has  been  all  cleared  up  or  cut 
and  dried  by  the  people  who  know  about  Prov;  • 
dence. 


/"^    or  THE 
f  UNIVERSITY 

OF 

\\  iro! 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

IV 

NOTHING    NEW 

A  YOUNG  literary  student,  rushing  bravely  along 
a  well-worn  path,  has  referred  in  a  learned  essay 
to  the  great  antiquity  of  new  ideas,  quoting,  of 
course,  the  proverb  about  the  lack  of  novelty 
under  the  sun  and  citing,  like  all  the  rest,  his 
modern  instances.  What  did  Darwin  do  but  un 
fold  the  thought  of  the  ancient  Heraclitus,  and 
what  would  John  Stuart  Mill  have  been  without 
Hippias  of  Keos?  Nietzsche's  philosophy  came 
straight  from  oriental  antiquity  via  Aristotle 
and  Carlyle,  and  Poe's  "Raven"  was  written 
twenty  centuries  ago  by  Kia  Yi,  the  Chinaman, 
and  Ruskin  spoke  up  for  the  manual  arts  because 
St.  Paul  was  a  tentmaker.  Every  respectable 
thought,  like  every  valuable  trotting  horse,  has 
its  pedigree.  And  yet  readers  still  persist  in 
looking  for  novelty  and  writers  are  apparently 
able  to  supply  it.  Why  is  this?  asked  the  stu 
dious  writer,  the  veins  on  his  young  brow  standing 
put  like  whipcords.  It  is  to  be  explained,  he 
216 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

thinks,  by  the  fact  that  the  ideas,  though  old,  are 
often  forgotten.  This  quest  for  originality,  he 
concludes,  is  not  a  bad  thing,  and  the  French 
critic  who  called  it  the  "worst  disease  of  our 
time"  was  wrong. 

Now  the  ins  and  outs  of  this  matter  do  not  con 
cern  us  every-day  people  at  all.  It  is  essentially 
the  collegiate  view  of  literature,  and  springs  from 
the  necessity  of  saying  to  young  men  the  sort 
of  things  that  they  could  pass  an  examination  in. 
Passing  an  examination  in  the  pedigree  of  the 
central  thoughts  of  great  authors  seems  a  hid 
eous  thing  to  most  of  us  alumni.  To  be  learned 
in  literature  is  such  a  different  thing  from  liking 
it.  It  is  characteristic  of  these  discussions  to 
leave  out  the  one  thing  we  care  about;  that  is, 
the  distinctive,  personal  marks  by  which  we  can 
tell  men  apart.  "A  writer  must  know  how  to 
write.  This  is  in  a  sense  the  very  first  condition 
of  success.  But  so  far  as  the  present  discussion 
is  concerned,  this  phase  of  the  question  must  be 
left  entirely  aside,"  etc.  And,  mercy  on  us,  what 
remains?  Why,  a  grouping  of  great  central 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

ideas,  whereby  Darwin  looks  like  the  twin  brother 
of  Heraclitus  and  Kia  Yi  and  Poe  are  indistin 
guishable,  and  St.  Paul  is  mixed  up  with  Ruskin, 
and  Plato  leads  Marie  Corelli  by  the  hand.  For 
literary  purposes  it  is  better  to  classify  men  by 
their  noses  than  by  their  great  central  ideas. 

Apply  this  test  of  novelty  to  Tolstoi's  message 
to  the  American  people  during  the  war  with 
Spain.  The  thoughts  on  the  nationalization  of 
land  are  Henry  George's ;  the  doctrine  that  prop 
erty  is  robbery  is  Proudhon's ;  the  plea  for  the 
socialization  of  the  means  of  production  is  an 
echo  of  commonplace  socialist  manifestoes ;  and 
every  one  of  these  notions  is  not  only  familiar 
but  flattened  out  and  dog-eared  by  thousands  of 
illiterate  thumbs.  Then  there  is  his  reference 
to  the  paganization  of  Christianity,  which  is 
fully  described  in  the  books,  and  his  appeal  to 
the  primitive  and  uncorrupted  Christianity, 
which  is  the  foundation  stone  of  about  every  new 
sect  that  is  started  and  the  substance  of  more 
sermons  than  you  could  count.  Not  much  would 
be  left  of  the  originality  of  Tolstoi  after  a  text 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

book  of  the  drier  criticism  had  duly  classified 
his  thoughts.  Yet  somehow  he  is  new  enough  to 
startle  and  true  enough  to  make  you  forget  his 
errors  and  impossibilities  and  the  genealogy  of 
his  general  notion  is  the  last  thing  you  care 
about.  This  is  for  the  scholars  of  the  drier  crit 
icism,  who  of  all  the  chapters  of  inspiration  like 
best  the  first  of  Matthew:  "And  Zorobabel  be 
gat  Abiud ;  and  Abiud  begat  Eliakim ;  and 
Eliakim  begat  Azor ;  and  Azor  begat  Sadoc." 

The  blessed  thing  about  this  world  is  that, 
however  old  the  general  notions  may  be,  some  of 
the  people  in  it  are  new,  and  they  have  a  way  of 
saying  and  doing  things  the  like  of  which  you 
would  swear  you  never  saw  before.  And  you 
never  did.  For  no  formula  ever  yet  told  the 
whole  story,  and  no  man  ever  yet  felt  and  spoke 
the  truth  without  creating  it,  and  no  work  of  art 
that  was  worth  anything  could  ever  help  being 
novel.  What  a  disagreeable  job  it  must  be,  this 
classifying  of  books  according  to  a  principle  by 
which  you  cannot  even  tell  whether  they  are  real 
books  or  not.  How  much  of  Zola  can  be  found 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

in  Zoroaster? — compare  the  good  and  evil  of 
Zola's  trilogy  with  Ahriman  and  Ormuzd.  It  is 
a  terrible  industry.  Why  not  own  up  that 
books,  like  people,  do  not  make  friends  in  this 
way?  Powerfully  disagreeable  people  may  have 
your  own  general  notion,  and  if  a  man  and  his 
wife  stood  on  precisely  the  same  platform  of 
principle  they  would  be  a  most  wonderful  and  un 
comfortable  pair.  By  the  time  literature  is  made 
ready  for  the  classroom,  with  all  its  elements  ex 
plained,  what  is  left  of  it?  The  lecturer  has 
descended  upon  his  subject  like  the  tortoise  that 
the  eagle  dropped  on  ^Eschylus's  bald  head. 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 


LITERARY    ANALYSIS 

AN  author,  like  a  bicycle,  ought  not  to  be  taken 
to  pieces  by  people  that  do  not  understand  the 
business.  In  a  recent  paper  an  American  novel 
ist  is  analyzed  by  a  French  critic,  and  when  the 
thing  is  done  all  the  king's  horses  and  all  the 
king's  men  couldn't  put  that  novelist  together 
again.  His  most  admiring  friends  would  not 
recognize  these  colossal  sections  as  fragments  of 
his  being.  There  is  a  good  deal  of  this  kind  of 
analysis  going  on  in  the  literary  journals,  and  it 
is  sometimes  as  irritating  as  certain  jointed  fishj 
ing  rods  in  wet  weather.  It  is  a  common  thing  to 
take  some  minor  literary  man  and  divide  him  up 
as  neatly  as  if  he  were  a  stick  of  chewing  gum 
already  half  cut  through  with  grooves  and  then 
give  his  qualities  such  big  names  that  when  re- 
combined  they  would  build  Julius  Caesar.  There 
is  a  lavishness  of  language  at  these  times  that 
leaves  nothing  over  against  the  day  when  the 
critic  may  run  across  a  man  of  real  significance. 

821 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

Besides  "virile  fascination,"  the  critic  finds  in 
this  harmless  novelist  philosophies  and  trends  of 
thought  and  social  dogmas  and  Zeitgeists  beyond 
all  count  or  measure. 

Now,  the  truth  is  the  philosophy  of  this  au 
thor,  or  of  any  other  literary  man  of  equal  rank, 
matters  very  little,  and  if  we  had  a  label  and  a 
pigeon-hole  for  every  section  of  his  intellect  we 
should  be  none  the  richer.  The  great  point  is 
how  well  he  knows  his  art.  One  reason  why  lit 
erary  criticism  is  so  unfruitful  in  this  day  is  that 
it  insists  on  grubbing  among  these  irrelevant 
matters.  It  does  not  say  of  a  man,  Granting  his 
premises,  is  the  thing  well  done?  but  What  are 
his  premises?  For  what  great  principles  does 
he  stand?  I  have  known  a  poem  to  be  con 
demned  because  its  political  economy  was  wrong, 
and  a  novel  to  be  placed  on  a  pinnacle  because  its 
author  was  a  Populist  at  heart.  What  has  this 
to  do  with  literary  analysis?  Chemical  analysis 
would  be  as  much  in  place.  This  is  the  spirit 
that  makes  such  dreary  schoolmen  of  our  critics. 
They  ransack  an  author  for  his  moral  purpose. 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

They  rattle  off  his  qualities  as  a  palmist  tells 
your  character.  They  weigh  his  work  by  politi 
cal  science,  psychology  and  social  economics. 
They  could  grade  each  part  of  him  on  the  scale 
of  ten  like  a  schoolboy's  recitation.  And  they 
think  this  scientific  thumbing  is  literary  analysis. 
The  man's  power  to  please,  his  skill  in  that  cu 
rious  magic  we  call  art,  the  only  thing  that  mat 
ters,  is  left  out. 

There  was  poor  old  Ruskin.  Suppose  we 
judged  him  by  this  standard,  what  would  be  left 
of  him?  No  man  could  count  the  blunders  that 
he  made.  He  built  on  false  premises,  reasoned 
like  a  child,  painted  as  if  he  were  a  political 
economist,  taught  political  economy  as  if  he  were 
a  painter.  Yet  on  that  cracked  and  battered  in 
strument  of  his  he  somehow  managed  to  play  a 
tune  that  will  sing  in  men's  ears  so  long  as  there 
is  leisure  left  for  music.  Our  Alexandrians  know 
this,  too ;  but  a  man  has  to  be  dead  or  shelved  for 
many  years  before  they  act  on  it.  For  living 
authors  they  have  a  different  test.  They  judge 
them  by  their  creeds  or  schools  or  party  plat- 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

forms,  by  anything  except  their  power  to  write. 
They  would  have  us  believe  that  it  is  a  matter  of 
supreme  importance  what  Mr.  Kipling  thinks  of 
England's  imperial  mission,  what  are  M.  Zola's 
views  of  heredity,  where  Mr.  Howells  stands  on 
social  questions,  and  whether  Mrs.  Humphry 
Ward  is  sound  in  economics,  and  they  go  on  an 
alyzing  deeper  and  deeper,  like  a  dog  at  an 
empty  woodchuck  hole.  And  when  it  is  all  said 
and  done  we  merely  learn  that  in  addition  to 
some  artistic  work  that  gives  us  pleasure  these 
writers  have  produced  some  text-book  matter  of 
an  indifferent  sort.  Some  superfluous  didactic 
stuff  that  we  do  not  much  care  for  has  been 
thrown  in,  and  this  is  what  the  analyst  fishes  out 
as  if  it  were  the  one  precious  thing.  Perhaps 
the  authors  think  so,  too,  but  notoriously  they 
love  their  worst  works  best. 

A  man  may  be  almost  crazy  and  still  write 
well.  Some  excellent  ones  have  been,  in  fact, 
maniacal.  He  may  be  the  soundest,  sanest,  best- 
informed  of  all  his  race  and  fail  completely.  He 
may  have  all  the  gifts  or  just  this  one.  Scoun- 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

drels  and  saints  and  sages,  sometimes  fools,  have 
all  contributed  to  literature.  It  is  with  the  qual 
ity  which  they  have  in  common  that  literary 
analysis  is  alone  concerned.  And  if  you  would 
see  a  writer  at  his  worst  take  him  when  his  phi 
losophy  is  uppermost.  The  worst  thing  that  M. 
Zola  ever  wrote  is  Dr.  Pascal,  which  gave  a  mas 
terly  summing  up  of  his  philosophy.  The  dark 
est  days  of  Mr.  Kipling  have  been  those  on  which 
purpose  got  the  better  of  him.  One  sleeps  most 
soundly  when  the  social  philosopher  in  Mr.  How- 
ells  is  most  wide  awake.  Yet  all  this  is  the 
special  field  of  current  literary  analysis.  The 
chief  harm  it  does  is  in  misleading  the  subject  of 
the  analysis.  The  author  is  encouraged  to  chase 
strange  gods.  As  for  the  rest  of  us,  if  there 
were  nothing  more  in  literature  than  these  men 
dream  of,  we  should  be  reading  text -books  if  we 
read  at  all. 


225 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

VI 

OUTDOOR    PEDANTRY 

NATURE-LOVERS  have  found  their  way  into  print 
with  rather  unusual  frequency  of  late  and  every 
little  while  a  reviewer  has  had  to  dispose  of  a 
dozen  volumes  or  so  of  their  publications  all  at 
once.  The  success  of  this  kind  of  writing  is  a 
healthy  sign  and  ought  to  be  a  comfort  to  the 
prophets  of  decay  as  indicating  that  there  are  a 
few  sound  spots  left  in  us.  A  people  cannot  be 
far  removed  from  innocence  when  books  of  this 
sort  are  widely  read  and  when  even  the  daily 
newspapers  drop  wars  and  politics,  as  they  some 
times  do,  for  a  wholly  irrelevant  editorial  rhap 
sody  on  cock-robin  or  autumn  leaves.  The  Lon 
don  papers,  especially,  are  given  to  these  rustic 
interludes.  Some  time  ago  one  of  our  magazines 
gathered  up  the  names  of  our  outdoor  writers 
and  published  an  article  on  them.  It  is  a  good 
showing  so  far  as  numbers  are  concerned.  There 
are  more  "rambles"  and  "bird-notes"  than  you 
would  ever  have  supposed,  and,  if  reviewers  are 
226 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

to  be  believed,  they  are  all  written  in  the  most 
charming  style.  But  reviewers  are  not  to  be 
believed.  No  one  ought  to  take  time  for  many  of 
these  books  if  there  are  passages  of  Thoreau 
which  he  has  not  yet  learned  by  heart.  These 
writers  are  serviceable  only  when  they  give  infor 
mation.  As  interpreters  they  are  of  no  use.  For 
this  business  we  must  still  rely  on  the  masters, 
and  how  few  of  them  there  are !  The  real  gift 
was  imparted  to  a  handful  so  that  we  should  not 
be  tied  to  our  indoor  libraries.  Providence  or 
dained  that  most  of  their  works  should  fit  into  a 
knapsack. 

A  clergyman  goes  a-fishing  and  comes  home 
well  browned  and  ten  pounds  fatter.  So  he  sits 
down  and  writes  a  book  full  of  trite  compliments 
to  nature  interspersed  with  a  good  deal  of  self- 
congratulation.  He  lays  claim  to  the  most  re 
fined  and  exquisite  emotion  you  ever  heard  of — 
not  one  particle  of  which  he  succeeds  in  passing 
along.  He  says  he  found  "sermons  in  stones, 
books  in  the  running  brooks"  (it  is  a  pity  Shake 
speare  ever  wrote  the  thing),  but  you  get  no  ink- 
227 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

ling  of  what  they  were.  And  because  it  is  a  good 
sort  of  thing  for  a  clergyman  to  do  and  shows 
a  fine  appetite  for  wholesome  fare  the  critics  are 
absurdly  easy  on  him.  "Such  a  subtle  sym 
pathy  with  nature  in  her  varying  moods,"  they 
say.  How  do  they  know  he  has  it  ?  Just  because 
he  swears  he  has.  So  they  run  him  in  with  a 
dozen  others  whom  they  are  praising  and  tell  us 
we  must  not  "neglect  the  lessons  that  are  to  be 
gained  from  so  charming  an  assortment  of  books 
as  have  been  provided  for  summer  instruction  and 
entertainment."  There  is  no  question  of  the 
man's  sincerity  or  of  the  worth  of  what  he  writes 
about,  but  unfortunately  these  two  are  not  the 
only  elements  of  good  writing.  Here  is  a  beau 
tiful  object,  and  there  a  genuine  admirer.  Yet 
the  net  result  of  bringing  them  together  may  be 
merely  twaddle  so  far  as  a  third  person  is  con 
cerned.  The  critics  forget  this.  All  the  world 
loves  a  lover,  but  it  usually  runs  away  from  him 
when  he  talks.  And  so  it  is  with  some  of  the 
people  who  make  such  an  ado  about  nestling  in 
nature's  bosom. 

228 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

It  is  a  rare  man  who  can  be  agreeably  articu 
late  in  these  matters.  They  are  hardly  more  com 
municable  in  speech  than  music  is.  Yet  there 
are  many  who  will  bully  you  for  not  making  the 
attempt  or  for  not  being  deeply  interested  in  the 
attempts  of  others.  Some  of  these  books  are  full 
of  a  sort  of  outdoor  snobbishness,  an  air  of  hav 
ing  an  especially  fine  make  of  soul  and  being 
proud  of  it.  The  writer  will  pity  people  who 
do  not  penetrate  this  or  that  of  nature's  secrets 
or  participate  in  certain  intimate  joys.  As  if  a 
few  banalities  about  a  rhododendron  were  an  evi 
dence  of  spiritual  good  form!  And  he  will  tell 
you  what  these  things  do  for  him — how  they 
strengthen  him  and  uplift  him  and  keep  his 
heart  pure  and  his  mind  clear.  "I  am  a  part  of 
nature  and  nature  is  a  part  of  me.  Tear  us 
apart,  and  nature  is  robbed  and  I  am  ruined." 
It  may  be  true,  but  there  should  be  some  other 
evidence  than  his  word  for  it.  It  is  indelicate  to 
be  forever  harping  on  nature's  partiality  for 
you.  To  the  open-air  pharisee,  half  the  fun  of 
it  is  in  the  feeling  that  there  are  so  few  like  him. 
229 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

You  cannot  fancy  his  enjoying  a  thing  quietly 
and  for  itself,  but  taking  notes  on  each  emotion 
in  order  to  write  it  up  afterward  ostentatiously. 
How  much  of  it  is  delight  in  objective  nature  and 
how  much  is  satisfaction  with  the  trim  little  in 
tellectual  outfit  he  surveys  her  with?  Yet  if 
there  is  one  lesson  she  is  supposed  to  din  into 
every  one  who  comes  close  enough  it  is  humility. 
In  England  there  are  signs  that  in  certain 
highly  respectable  magazines  and  newspapers 
Nature  is  even  worse  treated  than  with  us.  Ap 
parently  they  have  a  staff  correspondent  whom 
they  never  let  indoors — a  literary  bird-dog  for 
whom  the  house  is  no  place.  If  they  catch  him 
in  the  office  they  shoo  him  out  with  the  broom  to 
flush  some  small  game  for  the  next  number.  I 
gather  from  one  of  them  that  "the  winter  wind, 
unlike  the  entrancing  night  breezes  of  summer, 
is  one  of  the  few  sounds  that  please  even  more 
when  listened  to  indoors  than  out.  ...  It 
sighs  in  the  chimney?  it  moans  round  the  walls ; 
it  whistles  sometimes,  at  others  it  roars."  From 
another  I  have  learned  that  as  a  result  of  the  bad 
230 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

weather  of  the  week  before  the  birds  were  "thor 
oughly  worn  out  and  uncomfortable,"  and  "went 
to  bed  an  hour  before  their  time,"  though  some 
of  the  partridges  may  have  sat  up  somewhat 
longer.  Some  say  it  is  the  Englishman's  love  of 
nature,  and  would  have  you  think  it  spontaneous. 
It  is  nothing  of  the  sort.  It  is  a  clear  case  of 
compulsion.  The  wretches  hate  what  they  write 
of  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten.  You  can  tell  that 
from  their  style,  and  it  is  a  pity  they  should  be 
so  tormented.  Why  try  and  squeeze  a  great, 
wild,  forest  joy  out  of  a  little  cockney  heart? 

How  the  sense  of  obligation  in  this  matter  has 
increased.  You  could  follow  Thackeray's  fancy 
in  a  cab.  Dickens,  though  the  sense  of  locality 
was  as  strong  in  him  as  in  a  cat,  used  nature  only 
to  emphasize  pathos  or  punctuate  joy.  To  Bul- 
wer  all  outdoors  was  only  stage  carpentry  and 
paint.  Nowadays  the  least  essay  or  short  story 
must  be  trimmed  with  conventionalized  scraps  of 
nature,  like  a  woman's  hat.  Once  if  a  writer  did 
not  wish  to  do  it  he  did  not  have  to  try ;  but  there 
is  no  getting  out  of  it  in  these  days,  and  the 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

rarest  gift  of  the  generations  is  aped  by  every 
one  who  writes.  We,  too,  have  our  hypocrites 
who  go  and  live  among  the  pine  trees  in  order 
that  they  may  afterward  lie  about  the  thoughts 
they  had  there — Fourteenth  Street  imaginations 
struggling  with  the  great  north  woods.  But 
venal  Yankees  though  we  are,  we  have  not  yet 
established  outdoor  clerkships  like  these  British 
magazines.  To  be  sure,  in  the  pages  of  most  of 
our  novelists  the  sunrise  is  a  memory  of  insomnia, 
and  Pan  wears  a  high  hat,  but  the  feeling  for 
nature  is  not  so  dead  in  us  that  we  turn  her  over 
to  regular  correspondents  for  the  daily  press. 
As  countrymen  of  Thoreau,  it  will  be  some  time 
before  we  are  ready  for  those  weekly  letters  about 
the  "wren  so  full  of  jollity  and  the  redbreast  so 
companionable  to  man."  Occasionally,  per 
haps  ;  once  a  month  if  we  go  on  sinking ;  but  not 
once  a  week,  unless  we  have  a  crop  of  geniuses. 
For  you  might  as  well  require  a  weekly  epic 
or  a  weekly  tragedy  in  blank  verse.  There  is  no 
middle  class  in  this  kind  of  writing,  and  no  pos 
sibility  of  making  over  the  unfit.  Only  queer 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

effects  come  from  the  attempt,  such  as  those  of 
a  serious  young  romancer  of  Indiana  who  de 
scribed  a  yellow  sunset  in  terms  of  custard  pie. 
Better  an  equal  quantity  of  zoology  or  botany 
with  all  the  technical  terms  than  this  constrained 
recourse  to  nature  with  poetical  intent.  The 
man  of  whom  it  was  written: 

Primroses  on  the  river's  brim, 
Dicotyledons  were  to  him, 
And  they  were  nothing  more, 

was  at  least  honest,  and  might  have  done  better 
at  natural  description  than  any  literary  man  of 
merely  secondary  inspiration.  The  writers  above 
quoted  should,  if  they  behave  themselves,  be  al 
lowed  indoors,  for  that  is  evidently  where  their 
heart  is,  and  not  in  the  highlands  a-chasing  the 
deer. 


233 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

VII 

A    POPULARIZER 

THE  Life  and  Letters  of  Huxley  show  clearly  the 
worry  and  grief  that  he  caused  his  friends  by 
pausing  so  often  in  the  search  for  truth  to  spread 
the  knowledge  of  it.  Stick  to  pure  science,  dig 
deeper,  let  the  world  alone,  and,  above  all,  keep 
out  of  rows — that  was  the  spirit  of  most  of  their 
advice  to  him.  But  having  rather  more  than  his 
share  of  human  nature,  and  having  also  a  mind 
which  he  justly  described  as  "constructed  on  the 
high-pressure  tubular-boiler  principle,"  he  kept 
bobbing  up  on  the  surface  of  the  earth  to  set 
matters  straight  there.  By  thus  dividing  his 
time  he  may  have  spoiled  his  chance  as  a  special 
ist,  whose  post  mortem  nimbus,  I  understand,  is 
not  apt  to  last  unless  the  man  is  sunk  in  the 
monograph.  They  say  he  will  be  forgotten  be 
cause  he  tried  to  do  two  things  for  truth — first 
find  it  and  then  get  it  accepted.  Had  he  tried 
only  one  thing  we  might  remember  him,  as  long, 
say,  as  Charles  the  Fat  or  Didius  Julianus.  But 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

whatever  trick  time  may  play  on  him — and  we 
know  very  well  that  some  of  the  silliest  names  live 
the  longest — it  does  not  seem  now  as  if  his 
friends  need  have  worried  so.  For  the  present 
at  least  we  believe  he  did  as  much  for  the  world 
as  the  best  of  them. 

In  a  specialist's  heaven  he  may  not  have  a  high 
seat.  Some  of  the  brief  biological  reviews  of  the 
century  barely  noticed  him,  and  one  of  them  ig 
nores  altogether  the  work  with  which  his  name  is 
identified.  But  measuring  greatness  by  depth 
of  research  is  not  wholly  satisfactory,  since  there 
are  other  ways  of  serving  the  truth  than  by  dig 
ging  for  it.  If  a  man  can  popularize  without 
cheapening,  if  he  can  find  for  the  law  and  the 
cause  precisely  the  words  for  them,  it  is  hard  to 
see  why  he  should  be  shut  out  from  the  best  so 
ciety  in  our  graveyards.  And  that  was  where 
Huxley's  talent  lay — not  in  cutting  the  truth  to 
fit  current  demands  nor  in  diluting  it,  but  in 
stripping  it  for  action  that  it  might  the  sooner 
prevail.  He  was  for  hurrying  things  up,  and  he 
did  hurry  them  up,  perhaps,  by  a  generation.  An 
265 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

impatient  propounder  is  sometimes  as  good  for 
the  health  of  the  world  as  a  patient  investiga 
tor.  He  believed  that  the  better  the  cause  the 
better  should  be  the  expression  of  it,  so  he  pegged 
away  till  he  found  the  words  that  would  carry  it 
farthest.  Thus  he  became  a  popularizer,  but  in 
a  different  sense  from  the  type  of  man  who  makes 
little  journeys  into  science  in  order  to  peddle 
what  he  finds  there,  different  even  from  the  late 
Max  Miiller,  if  we  may  trust  the  critics,  since 
that  worthy  man  seems  sometimes  to  have  con 
founded  truth  with  confectionery.  But  the 
specialists  are  very  severe,  and  likely  as  not  they 
will  dock  a  man's  glory  for  the  time  he  lost  in 
fighting  their  battles  for  them.  It  seems  a  pity 
in  Huxley's  case.  It  was  such  a  splendid  and 
honorable  truancy.  He  may  have  served 
science  as  well  by  living  among  men  as  if  he 
had  spent  his  whole  life  among  the  Labyrintho- 
donts. 

Most  popularizers  being  of  the  other  sort,  the 
whole  breed  bears  a  bad  name  among  specialists, 
as  if  the  knowledge  of  things  must  be  forever 
236 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

divorced  from  the  ability  to  say  them.  Mr.  Mor- 
ley  was  censured  not  long  ago  for  writing  a 
readable  work  on  history.  It  was  true  and  well 
done,  said  his  critic,  but  it  wasted  time  that  should 
have  been  spent  in  searching  for  facts.  Just  how 
much  of  the  man  must  be  filed  away  in  making 
the  specialist?  Huxley  or  Bagehot,  or  even 
Macaulay,  is  a  better  example  for  a  democratic 
age  than  Dr.  Casaubon.  For  while  the  learned 
are  gathering  their  private  hoards,  a  lot  of  de 
based  coin  is  circulating.  Suppose  economic 
science  to-day  should  find  its  Huxley.  He  would 
carry  it  as  far  as  the  doctrines  of  Henry  George 
or  the  Marxists.  As  much  has  been  done  in  the 
last  fifty  years  as  in  the  fifty  before  them,  but 
Smith  and  Ricardo  and  Bastiat  and  Mill  knew 
how  to  state  it.  We  have  as  many  good  reser 
voirs  of  thought,  but  less  irrigation.  A  man  may 
be  a  Bryanite  with  ridiculous  impunity ;  yet  evo 
lution  should  be  no  easier  to  teach  than  common 
sense  about  the  currency.  For  that  reason  the 
artistic  clubbing  that  Huxley  gave  the  enemy 
may  place  him  as  high  in  the  world's  esteem 
237 


ON    CERTAIN    PEDANTRIES 

as  if  he  had  stayed  in  his  laboratory,  there 
being  a  need  of  the  very  part  he  accused  himself 
of  playing,  that  "of  something  between  maid-of- 
all-work  and  gladiator-general  for  Science." 


238 


PART    VII 

MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 
I 

THE   SUMMER    EXPERIMENT 

THE  family  will  soon  be  coming  back,  and  there 
is  about  an  even  chance  that  the  head  of  it  will 
announce  her  firm  determination  never  to  go  to 
that  place  again.  Trying  new  places  is  a  matter 
of  hazard  save  for  the  rich,  whose  choice  is  un 
restricted,  and  the  fatuous,  who  are  happy  any 
where.  The  rest  are  likely  to  blunder  in  and  out 
of  summer  places,  engaging  prison  cells  in  ad 
vance  and  facing  dreadful  odds  in  the  matter  of 
food.  There  is  naturally  a  large  proportion  of 
failures.  The  unlucky  ones  may,  as  the  seasons 
roll  past,  exchange  discomforts  at  the  seaside  for 
239 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

pain  among  the  hills,  but  while  there  are  degrees 
of  failure,  they  seldom  report  anything  like  a 
positive  success.  Wounds  heal  in  the  winter  and 
hope  springs  up  again  in  May,  showing  itself 
first  in  a  conviction  that  there  "must  be  nice 
places  if  you  only  knew,"  and  later  in  a  willing 
ness  to  believe  lies.  And  the  lies  gather  thick 
and  fast,  coming  not  only  from  their  natural 
sources,  but  from  people  with  whom  your  rela 
tions  had  been  of  the  kindest  and  from  friends 
whom  you  had  always  supposed  stanch  and  true. 
Their  worst  treachery  is  in  that  matter  of  the 
food.  The  lies  about  the  people  do  not  matter 
so  much,  because  as  time  goes  on  one  learns  the 
ratio  of  "charming  people"  to  the  rest  of  the 
population.  Buoyant  natures  find  nests  of  them 
wherever  they  go,  but  experience  has  chastened 
most  of  us  into  a  reasoned  calculation  of  chances 
and  we  know  how  seldom  "charming  people"  are 
found  in  coveys,  the  keenest  sportsman  being 
lucky  if  he  can  flush  two  of  them  in  a  year.  But 
the  hope  of  good  food  constantly  renews  itself. 
The  mind  is  eager  to  believe,  and  the  beginning 
240 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

of  each  season  finds  us  as  trustful  as  a  little  child. 
Not  a  great  variety,  says  the  betrayer,  but  on  the 
whole  an  excellent  table;  good,  plain,  sensible, 
simple,  hearty,  wholesome,  nourishing  things, 
and  plenty  of  them,  at  which  the  castigated  pulse 
gives  the  same  old  foolish  wallop  every  year. 
Good  meats  and  vegetables,  fresh  eggs  and  fault 
less  butter,  the  full  menu  of  a  fool's  paradise, 
and  under  the  spur  of  an  excited  imagination  the 
contract  is  signed.  Shall  we  never  learn  the 
worthlessness  of  other  people's  views  of  food? 
There  is  no  authoritative  body  of  comment  on 
food.  Like  all  the  deeper  personal  problems  of 
life,  you  must  face  it  alone.  A  chance  acquaint 
ance  is  no  more  fitted  to  decide  for  you  a  ques 
tion  of  butter  than  to  pick  you  out  a  wife.  It  is 
not  a  matter  of  absolute  merit,  but  an  intimate 
and  personal  affair,  and  the  butter  which  in 
vites  him  daily  for  three  months  may  seem  to 
you  to  breathe  a  curse.  It  no  more  supplies  a 
universal  criterion  than  mother's  love,  the  worst 
case  of  butter  ever  known  being  no  doubt  some 
body's  darling,  as  you  might  say. 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

Lying  on  the  one  hand,  and  credulity  and  a 
total  disregard  of  personal  equations  on  the 
other,  account  for  many  failures  in  experimental 
summering.  To  be  sure,  there  is  Nature,  and  we 
admit  that  the  life  is  more  than  food  and  the 
body  than  raiment,  but  even  a  poet  would  be  bet 
ter  if  he  had  better  things  inside  him — "so  might 
he,  standing  on  this  pleasant  lea,  have  glimpses 
that  would  make  him  less  forlorn."  And  the 
family  must  take  a  different  view  of  Nature  from 
either  the  poet  or  the  woodsman  and  place  a  limit 
on  her  compensations.  If  it  did  not,  it  would  not 
live  to  grow  up.  Hardships  go  with  a  wild,  free 
life,  hunting  grizzlies  and  the  like  of  that,  but 
the  family  are  doing  nothing  of  the  sort.  So  it 
seems  illogical  that  they  should  fare  like  moose- 
hunters  in  the  mountain  boarding-house  or  be 
treated  like  old  salts  in  the  hotel  by  the  sea. 
They  argue  with  a  show  of  reason  that  they 
ought  not  to  be  pelted  with  all  the  hardships  of 
the  wild,  free  life  when  they  are  not  leading  it. 
But  landlords  often  reason  differently,  holding 
that  where  Nature  does  so  much  for  the  family 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

less  is  required  of  the  bill  of  fare.  These  are 
some  of  the  things  that  sometimes  bring  back  the 
family  after  the  summer  experiment  with  stern 
lines  showing  beneath  the  tan. 


343 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

II 

THE    PEOPLE    NEXT    DOOR 

OUTWARDLY  you  may  be  on  friendly  terms  with 
the  people  next  door,  but,  if  the  truth  were 
known,  you  do  not  think  much  of  them.  Their 
ways  may  be  well  enough,  but  they  are  not  your 
ways.  It  is  not  hatred,  far  less  envy ;  neither  is 
it  contempt  exactly.  Only  you  do  not  under 
stand  why  they  live  as  they  do.  You  account 
for  some  things  by  the  differences  in  social 
traditions.  They  were  not  brought  up 
as  you  were  —  not  that  they  are  to  blame 
for  that,  but  certain  advantages  that  you 
had  were  denied  them.  Rude  noises  come  from 
that  house  next  door  that  you  would  not  expect 
from  people  in  their  station.  There  is  nothing 
that  so  reveals  the  breeding  of  the  inmates  as  the 
noises  that  come  from  a  house.  Laughter  late 
at  night,  when  you  want  to  sleep — how  coarse  it 
sounds !  That  is  what  the  strong  writer  prob 
ably  means  by  ribald  laughter.  Then  there  is 
that  young  woman  who  sings.  What  voices  the 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

people  next  door  always  have,  and  what  a  reper 
toire  of  songs!  Why  do  they  never  try  a  new 
one?  There  must  be  new  songs  from  time  to 
time  within  the  means  of  any  one,  but  you  never 
hear  them  next  door.  Years  after  a  song  is  for 
gotten  elsewhere  it  goes  on  next  door.  A  popular 
song  never  dies.  The  people  next  door  rescue  it 
after  it  is  hounded  off  the  street  and  warm  it  into 
eternal  life.  Girls  begin  on  it  in  their  teens  and 
worry  it  away  on  into  womanhood.  Even  after 
they  are  married  off  they  do  not  get  over  it,  and 
when  they  come  home  to  visit  you  hear  it  again — 
"Eyes  so  balloo  and  tender,"  or  whatever  it  may 
be.  Fancy  the  kind  of  people  that  would  let  a 
young  woman  sing  "Eyes  so  balloo  and  tender" 
all  through  life,  even  if  she  wanted  to.  It  must 
injure  her  mind. 

And  so  it  goes.  Everything  they  do  shows 
just  what  sort  of  people  they  are.  Look  at  the 
things  they  hang  out  in  their  back  yard — and 
is  there  ever  a  day  when  some  of  their  old  traps 
are  not  hanging  out  or  standing  around  there? 
If  your  things  looked  like  that  you  would  at 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

least  keep  them  indoors.  It  is  not  that  they  are 
so  old,  though  for  the  matter  of  that  you  should 
think  they  would  be  afraid  of  germs,  but  they 
were  chosen  with  such  monstrously  bad  taste  in 
the  first  place.  What  in  the  world  do  people  want 
to  furnish  a  house  with  things  like  that  for? 
They  must  have  cost  enough,  too,  and  for  that 
amount  of  money  they  could  have  bought — but 
what  is  the  use  of  talking?  There  are  distinc 
tions  that  you  never  can  make  people  feel. 

That  cook  of  theirs  you  would  not  have  in 
your  house  five  minutes.  It  must  surely  be  un 
safe  to  eat  what  a  person  like  that  would  cook. 
A  certain  degree  of  neatness  is  indispensable, 
and  people  who  were  used  to  things  would  insist 
upon  it.  That  is  the  trouble  with  the  people 
next  door — they  are  not  used  to  things.  It  is 
easy  enough  to  put  a  stop  to  certain  matters  if 
you  take  them  in  hand,  such,  for  instance,  as 
those  awful  Irish  whoops  that  issue  every  even 
ing  from  their  kitchen  windows.  But  the  people 
next  door  do  not  mind — that  is  the  sum  of  it — 
they  simply  do  not  mind  things  that  would  drive 
246 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

you  stark  mad.  They  can  sleep  through  their 
own  hideous  noise,  eat  their  own  ill-prepared 
food,  put  up  with  anything,  just  because  it  is 
theirs.  Content  is  a  good  thing  and  family  af 
fection  is  laudable,  but  in  this  particular  case 
each  goes  too  far.  It  annoys  you  to  think  of  the 
narrow  basis  on  which  it  subsists.  What  can  the 
wife  see  in  the  husband  or  the  husband  in  the 
wife,  or  either  of  them  in  those  young  ones  ? 

Yesterday  a  correspondent  wrote  to  a  news 
paper  complaining  of  the  carpet  beating  that 
went  on  next  door.  Hitherto  he  had  thought 
those  people  were  gentlefolk.  He  doubts  it  now. 
The  people  next  door  are  always  doing  things 
that  enable  you  to  "size  them  up."  You  size 
them  up  ten  or  fifteen  times  a  day.  The  women 
in  your  family  size  them  up  much  of tener.  That 
doubt  of  next-door  gentility  is  universal.  It  is 
no  accident  that  brings  that  kind  of  people  next 
door  to  you.  It  is  the  working  of  a  mighty  so 
cial  law.  You  are  charitable  in  the  matter.  You 
admit  their  virtues — that  is,  the  big  ones,  which 
nobody  uses  more  than  once  a  year.  They  are 
247 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

respectable  people  and  well-intentioned.  But 
they  always  lack  one  indefinable  thing  which  you 
have,  whatever  may  be  your  faults.  It  is  very 
important.  The  social  plane  always  slants  down 
toward  the  people  next  door.  One  should  not  be 
snobbish  about  it,  but  the  slant  is  there,  neverthe 
less,  and  you  cannot  help  knowing  it.  If  we 
created  a  nobility  over  here  the  people  next  door 
could  never  get  in.  If  you  ever  mention  these 
things  you  do  so  with  the  utmost  delicacy  and 
you  explain  over  and  over  again  that  you  do  not 
mean  anything  against  the  people.  You  would 
not  for  the  world  let  them  know  you  felt  as  you 
do.  This  is  all  wasted.  This  is  the  land  of  sub 
jective  aristocracy. 


£48 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

III 

THE    CHEERFUL    GIVER 

THE  "economic  man,"  that  bloodless  hero  of 
scientific  fiction,  will  drop  out  of  sight  in  a  few 
days,  and  personal  property  will  be  flying  about 
in  wild  disregard  of  the  ordinary  laws  of  ex 
change.  Christmas  must  have  been  a  bad  time 
for  the  old  school  of  economists.  It  must  have 
struck  them  as  a  sort  of  saturnalia  of  benevo 
lence,  a  period  of  economic  anarchy  wherPcapital 
flowed  into  pendent  stockings  instead  of  its  most 
productive  channels,  and  enlightened  self-inter 
est  was  not  admitted  into  decent  society.  It  took 
the  starch  out  of  logic  and  scandalized  some  very 
respectable  premises.  It  was  an  annual  reminder 
of  the  world's  complexity  and  the  difficulty  of 
putting  all  humanity  into  a  few  neat  proposi 
tions.  Most  of  this  particular  group  of  doctrin 
aires  have  since  died  off,  some  of  them  of  a  broken 
heart,  it  is  said.  The  suspension  of  the  economic 
law  of  grab  and  the  suspicion  that  that  cheer 
ful  philosophy  is  not  always  applicable  does  not 
249 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

trouble  us  any  more.  In  fact,  in  our  reaction 
against  it,  at  this  season  we  think  it  is  a  virtue  to 
suspend  common  sense  and  to  treat  givers  as  if 
they  were  above  all  laws  of  reason.  This  is  a  mis 
take.  The  superb  ethical  position  of  the  giver 
may  be  abused.  The  adages  in  regard  to  him 
need  revision.  That  one  about  looking  the  gift 
horse  in  the  mouth  makes  him  careless  and  some 
times  injurious,  and  the  statement  that  the  Lord 
loves  a  cheerful  giver  needs  qualification.  Peo 
ple  will  do  idiotic  things  in  the  cheerfullest  kind 
of  way. 

The  gaucheries  of  givers  are  very  saddening, 
and  say  what  you  will,  gratitude  is  the  most 
practical  minded  of  all  the  virtues.  A  few  years 
ago  Lord  Kitchener  gave  the  queen  an  iron-gray 
donkey  twelve  hands  high  and  with  ears  a  foot 
long,  and  the  Duchess  of  Cumberland  received 
from  him  a  like  token  of  regard  at  the  same  time, 
though,  as  befitted  her  lower  station,  her  donkey 
was  much  smaller  than  the  queen's.  Lord  Kitche 
ner  is  a  blunt,  soldierlike  person,  and  nothing  of 
a  ladies'  man,  and  the  Soudan  is  a  wretched  place 
250 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

to  shop  in.  But  there  would  be  no  excuse  even 
for  him  if  he  were  in  London  within  range  of 
feminine  counsel  and  should  allow  his  Christmas 
good  will  to  take  the  form  of  sending  donkeys 
to  all  the  women  of  his  acquaintance.  Yet  that 
is  just  the  sort  of  thing  some  people  are  always 
doing,  and  we  are  told  that  it  is  a  sin  not  to  beam 
on  them  afterward.  Think  of  their  warm  hearts  ? 
You  can't  do  it — at  least  not  until  your  first  fine 
rage  is  spent.  Take  the  silver-plated  ice  pitcher 
abuse  for  example.  It  is  not  very  common  now, 
but  there  was  a  time  when  groups  of  benevolent 
persons  organized  behind  a  man's  back  and  gave 
him  a  great  gleaming  water  tank  that  would 
yield  its  contents  only  to  the  mighty.  Corporate 
kindness  always  took  the  forms  of  an  ice  pitcher 
or  a  gold-headed  cane.  No  one  ever  thought  of 
anything  else.  This  was  because  givers  were 
not  taught  to  think  at  all.  They  had  only  to  be 
cheerful.  The  recipient  did  the  thinking  in 
these  instances — a  hard,  blighted  kind  of  think 
ing  about  the  exchange  power  of  ice  pitchers  and 
gold-headed  canes  in  general. 
251 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

The  golden  rule  is  a  false  guide  in  giving. 
Observe  the  motto  about  putting  yourself  in 
his  place,  but  in  applying  this  don't  project  all 
your  peculiar  whims  into  people  whom  they  can 
not  fit.  Here  is  a  man  with  a  penchant  for  taxi 
dermy,  and  his  way  of  doing  as  he  would  be  done 
by  is  to  give  the  stuffed  carcass  of  a  great  golden 
eagle  with  wings  outspread  to  a  young  couple 
living  in  a  small  way  in  an  uptown  flat.  Out  of 
regard  for  this  cheerful  giver  it  hangs  over  the 
centre  table,  drawing  bugs  and  scaring  strangers 
till  gratitude  relaxes  its  grip  on  the  conscience. 
Then  it  goes  into  the  junk  room.  Givers  have 
things  too  much  their  own  way  and  receive  too 
delicate  consideration.  They  are  bolstered  up 
by  partisan  proverbs  in  a  belief  that  they  have 
no  responsibilities  and  can  do  no  wrong.  The 
harm  they  often  work  is  none  the  less  for  the 
polite  concealment  of  the  victims.  They  can  fill 
a  man's  house  with  abominations  and  secret 
misery.  There  are  ironies  of  benevolence  beyond 
all  dictates  of  courtesy  or  sentiment.  Sentiment 
must  not  be  allowed  to  wreck  the  home  life.  A 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

man  is  not  to  be  blamed  for  not  wishing  to  live 
amid  burlesque  surroundings,  and  that  is  what 
it  would  amount  to  if  givers  persist  in  treating 
him  as  if  he  were  the  curator  of  a  museum  or 
lived  in  the  rotunda  of  a  national  capitol.  In 
time  there  may  be  text  books  on  the  art  of  giving, 
but  in  the  meanwhile  observe  the  following  prov 
erbs  as  amended: 

( 1 )  The  Lord  loveth  a  cheerful  and  intelligent 
giver. 

(2)  A  gift  horse  may  not  be  looked  in  the 
mouth,  but  don't  lose  your  temper  if  he  is  stabled 
in  the  attic. 


253 


MINOR   OPPRESSIONS 

IV 

THE   SERIOUS   WOMAN 

IF  women  are  really  anxious  for  equal  oppor 
tunities  with  men  they  should  not  make  such 
terrifying  threats  as  to  what  they  will  do  when 
they  get  them.  At  an  important  meeting  of  the 
Woman's  Society  for  the  Promotion  of  Politi 
cal  Conversation,  not  long  ago,  one  of 
the  arguments  for  coeducation  was  that 
under  present  conditions  the  average  girl  is 
apt  to  see  a  halo  around  the  head  of  a  young 
man  with  a  blond  moustache,  and  that  if 
she  were  associated  with  him  in  classroom  work 
the  halo  would  not  be  there.  This  is  bad 
strategy,  and  yet  women  are  always  practising 
it,  whether  their  aim  is  coeducation  or  the  right 
to  vote  or  equality  of  opportunity  in  the  profes 
sions.  They  always  talk  as  if,  when  they  had 
gained  these  things,  there  was  going  to  be  a 
general  searching  into  man,  to  detect  the  creature 
as  he  really  is  and  then  expose  him. 

Is  this  politic?    Is  a  man  likely  to  stir  himself 
*** 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

in  their  behalf  if  by  so  doing  he  stands  to  lose 
all  the  safeguards  of  his  self-complacency  ?  This 
practice  of  referring  to  the  emancipation  time  as 
a  sort  of  judgment  day  for  the  other  sex  is  no 
way  to  help  it  on  even  in  half -won  fields  like  co 
education.  The  blond  man's  halo  is  no  great 
matter,  of  course,  because  blond  men  are  com 
paratively  rare,  but  it  is  typical  of  all  sorts  of 
little  halos  that  it  would  be  pleasant  to  keep.  It 
is  not  easy  to  keep  them,  as  things  are,  and  when 
women  begin  to  look  at  them  in  that  steely  way 
they  will  be  as  rare  as  the  tall  white  hat. 

Cold-blooded  remarks  like  this  do  more  to  keep 
history  from  opening  its  woman's  page  than  is 
commonly  supposed.  It  is  a  cry  of  no  quarter 
to  a  struggling  self-esteem,  and  makes  it  des 
perate.  It  hurts  awfully  to  lose  a  halo,  and  if 
women  mean  to  abolish  them  they  had  better  say 
nothing  about  it. 

Then  there  is  the  woman's  club  movement.     If 

there  is  any  man  left  who  is  disposed  to  take  a 

light  view  of  it  he  should  be  made  to  read,  as  I 

have  done,  the  official  organ  of  the  Cause.    It  will 

255 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

prove  to  him  at  once  that  this  movement  is  the 
most  serious  thing  on  earth.  The  most  striking 
feature  of  it  is  the  immense  amount  of  purpose 
that  a  woman  must  have  about  her  when  she  j  oins 
a  club.  "What  is  your  aim  to  be  in  club  life 
this  winter?"  asks  the  editor  of  the  official  organ. 
And  here  are  a  few  of  the  questions  that  each 
member  is  supposed  to  ask  herself :  "What  is  the 
club  going  to  be  to  me  this  winter?"  "Shall  we 
enter  the  club  to  seek  and  perhaps  find  an 
office?  To  dawdle  the  time  away?  To  work 
ourselves  to  death?"  "Or  shall  we  enter  our  club 
life  once  more  with  the  determination  to  take 
things  calmly  and  not  overwork  or  overworry  in 
the  matter?"  It  is  almost  sacramental.  Along 
with  intense  exaltation  of  spirit  must  go  perfect 
self-control.  Cool,  steady  hands  are  what  they 
need  for  this  grim  business — none  of  your  alarm- 
clock  women  that  buzz  for  a  little  and  then  run 
down.  No  man's  club  ever  saw  the  like  of  it. 
Cromwell's  Ironsides  are  the  nearest  thing  to  it  in 
history.  It  is  a  gigantic  but  not  necessarily  a 
hostile  force.  "And  then  let  us  try  to  make  the 
256 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

average  man  see  the  value  of  the  club  movement. 
He  will  if  he  does  not  have  to  eat  too  many  cheer 
less  dinners  and  spend  too  many  lonely  evenings 
in  consequence  of  it."  Toss  a  word  to  the  lonely, 
red-eyed  husband  now  and  then. 

Finally  there  is  that  insistent  question,  What 
shall  we  do  about  woman?  Some  of  us  shirk  it 
from  sloth,  and  others  dodge  it  from  cowardice, 
but  there  is  a  grim  little  band  of  women  that 
neither  flag  nor  flinch.  And  there  is  no  end  to 
the  number  of  the  problems  or  their  complexity. 
"There  is  not  space,"  said  one  of  them,  "in  the 
course  of  this  present  article  to  make  out  a  com 
plete  list  of  the  problems  which  woman  will  help 
to  solve,"  but  she  had  such  a  list  in  mind,  and 
knew  that  if  she  once  could  publish  it,  it  would 
greatly  enhance  the  value  of  this  already  service 
able  sex.  "Marriage,"  she  said,  "is  a  problem  in 
the  solution  of  which  woman  must  assist,"  and 
this  was  only  one  among  many.  "The  relatively 
minor  but  still  most  important  problems  of 
motherhood  are  so  interwoven  with  those  of 
fatherhood,"  she  went  on,  "that  the  former  can- 
257 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

not  be  solved  without  a  parallel  solution  of  the 
latter."  Up,  nevertheless,  and  at  them,  as  they 
come  out  in  the  magazines.  But  for  us  the  prob 
lem  of  problems,  the  question  that  burns  and 
baffles,  the  damnably  difficult  rebus,  the  great 
corrosive  conundrum  is,  Why  do  they  talk  like 
this? 

What  shall  we  do  about  woman?  Need  we  do 
anything  just  now?  The  hardest  thing  about 
the  woman  problem  is  to  realize  that  it  exists. 
Is  there  any  serious  danger  that  she  will  not  suc 
ceed  as  a  sex?  Apart  from  this  slight  risk  it 
would  seem  in  most  cases  to  be  a  mere  human- 
being  problem  after  all.  People  are  so  used  to 
this  large,  loose  language  that  nothing  seems  to 
amaze  them,  and  when  a  woman  exclaims,  "Come 
let  us  solve  motherhood  and  then  expose  father 
hood,  clearing  up  the  marriage  question  en 
passant"  it  is  taken  as  a  matter  of  course.  I 
hold  that  intrinsically  it  is  supremely  queer,  and 
that  age  cannot  wither  or  custom  stale  its  infinite 
absurdity.  And  may  the  time  never  come  when 
there  will  not  be  a  plenty  to  answer  these  ques- 
258 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

tions  offhand,  with  the  stars  all  winking  above 
them,  and  the  horizon  grinning  around  them, 
and  underfoot  that  ancient,  ironical  planet  which 
loves  each  new  snapshot  at  its  mystery  as  the 
best  of  its  little  old  jokes. 


259 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 


MUSIC    AT    MEALS 

THERE  seems  to  be  an  increase  in  the  number  of 
our  hotels  and  restaurants  that  provide  music  at 
meals.  Bands  are  playing  where  they  never 
played  before,  and  the  new  places  are  pretty  sure 
to  open  with  an  orchestra.  During  the  past  ten 
years  the  city's  restaurants  have  prospered  ex 
ceedingly,  but  no  more  than  they  ought.  What 
ever  may  be  said  of  public  morals,  cooking  has 
certainly  advanced,  and  it  has  been  the  ideal  form 
of  progress,  affecting  all  ranks;  for  not  only 
have  the  best  improved,  but,  what  is  more  im 
portant,  hundreds  once  sunk  in  savagery  now 
show  rudiments  of  art.  Hence  it  happens  that 
the  pilgrim  may  stop  by  the  wayside  at  unwonted 
places  at  far  less  risk.  The  zone  of  edible  steaks 
has  widened  with  the  progress  of  the  suns.  But 
the  music — that  is  a  more  doubtful  matter.  No 
one  ought  to  dogmatize  about  it,  but  whether 
the  spread  of  it  is  for  good  or  evil  is  a  question 
to  be  calmly  reasoned  out. 
260 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

To  judge  from  appearances,  the  majority  of 
those  who  eat  to  music  are  in  no  wise  embarrassed 
by  this  combination  of  their  joys.  Soups  and 
sonatas,  mutton  and  nocturnes  strike  them  less 
as  rival  candidates  for  notice  than  as  fellow  min- 
istrants  to  wants.  And  there  is  warrant  for  it 
among  the  most  musical  people  in  the  world, 
many  of  whom  will  absorb  the  most  spiritual 
music  and  the  largest  sausage  at  the  same  mo 
ment  and  with  perfect  ease.  But  the  Germans 
have  nothing  to  teach  us  in  the  art  of  dining, 
and  it  is  that,  not  music,  that  is  in  question.  For 
men  fall  obviously  into  the  two  groups  of 
the  eaters  and  the  diners.  The  eater  can 
divide  his  attention  with  almost  anything 
at  dinner.  He  can  read,  write,  watch  a  dog 
fight  through  the  window,  or  foot  up  his  ex 
pense  account  for  the  week.  If  he  had  a  nose 
bag,  like  a  truckman's  horses,  he  would  not  at 
meal  time  lay  down  his  golf  clubs  or  his  pen.  It 
is  a  mere  mechanical  process  like  whittling  or 
folding  an  umbrella.  On  the  other  hand  the  far 
smaller  class  of  diners  have  learned  by  experience 
261 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

or  tradition  that  it  is  an  independent  art,  and 
though  they  may  not  practise  it  proficiently  they 
recognize  its  existence  and  respect  its  rules.  The 
least  epicurean  among  them  is  hurt  by  certain  in 
congruities.  He  does  not  want  his  favorite  poem 
with  his  roast.  It  is  no  time  for  a  high  spiritual 
appeal.  Charles  Lamb  went  so  far  as  to  object 
even  to  saying  grace  at  a  good  dinner,  holding 
that  it  suited  only  a  meagre  or  precarious  meal. 
If  not  a  poem,  why  a  musical  composition? 
The  more  distractingly  beautiful  it  is,  the  worse 
it  is  for  the  business  in  hand.  It  is  a  ridiculous 
sort  of  person  that  wants  much  sentiment  at 
meals.  Joseph  Sedley  is  the  type.  All  this  is 
on  the  assumption  that  the  music  and  the  cookery 
are  both  good.  The  man  who  would  serve  both 
masters  either  closes  his  ears  and  eats  merely  or 
spills  things  and  half  chews,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  various  accessories  of  dining  which  are  neg 
lected  or  botched. 

But  if  the  music  is  bad,  which  at  present  is 
generally  the  case,  then  there  is  no  defence  save 
that  old  one  of  giving  the  public  what  it  wants, 
262 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

and  this  has  nothing  to  do  either  with  morals  or 
with  the  principles  of  art.  Things  have  come 
to  a  pretty  pass  if  there  is  to  be  no  more  talking 
at  meals.  People  do  it  better  then  than  at  any 
other  time,  and  even  if  they  do  not  do  it  well 
you  can  stand  more  from  them.  It  could  be  ar 
ranged  easily  enough,  if  the  restaurants  pro 
vided  one  or  two  muffled  or  sound-proof  rooms. 
At  present  the  blasts  of  the  band  not  only  domi 
nate  every  nook  and  corner,  but  they  have  a 
devilish  way  of  concealing  the  thing  so  that  you 
are  as  likely  as  not  to  sit  down  in  its  very  jaws. 
Henceforth  the  intimacies  of  private  conversation 
must  compete  with  merciless  things  in  rag-time 
accentuated  by  a  horn,  for  some  restaurants  have 
introduced  wind  instruments,  though  as  yet  there 
are  no  drums.  These  may  come  in  time,  along 
with  cornet,  flute,  harp,  sackbut,  psaltery  and 
dulcimer,  if  nothing  is  done. 

Not  to  imply  that  the  combination  of  music 
with  dining  is  theoretically  impossible,  but  com 
posers    have    not    had    that    in    view.       They 
have    applied    their    genius    to    love,  war,  re- 
263 


MINOR    OPPRESSIONS 

ligion,  seafaring  and  the  dance,  but  as  yet 
there  is  nothing  that  can  be  called  distinctively 
meal  music.  It  comes  to  us,  therefore,  re 
plete  with  other  associations  which  are  necessa 
rily  out  of  place.  It  is  as  absurd  to  eat  to  a  war 
song  as  to  dance  to  a  requiem  mass.  Simple,  un 
obtrusive  meal  songs  are  what  we  need,  a  little 
potato  cantata,  say,  or  a  fugue  that  will  go  with 
the  beans. 


£64 


PART  VIII 

THE     BUSINESS     OF    WRIT 
ING,    AND    ITS    GLORY 


LITERARY  REPUTATIONS 

I  ONCE  read  an  article  on  "Disappearing  Au 
thors"  chiefly  because  the  title  caught  me,  but  to 
my  disappointment  I  found  that  the  writer  had 
nothing  to  say  beyond  a  mere  expression  of  won 
der  at  the  disappearance  of  certain  authors 
from  the  popular  view.  A  genuine  attempt  to 
find  out  why  certain  once  popular  authors  have 
disappeared  would  be  most  interesting,  but  there 
is  a  line  of  inquiry  which  is  still  better  worth 
while. 

Suppose  a  man    of    rich  literary    experience 
would  frankly  tell  what  he  knows  about  the  non- 
265 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

disappearance  of  certain  authors  who  really 
ought  to  disappear.  How  do  they  keep  from 
disappearing?  There's  a  thing  worth  knowing. 
How  to  make  a  reputation  work  for  you  and 
pay  your  coal  bills  and  seat  you  high  in  pleasant 
places  where  you  don't  belong ;  how  to  create  the 
illusion  of  importance  and  keep  it  up  at  the  least 
cost — that  is  a  royal  art  whose  secrets  are  worth 
digging  for.  For  some  reason  we  moralize  about 
such  cases,  and,  having  caught  an  author  at  the 
trick,  we  feel  it  our  duty  to  be  indignant  or  at 
least  contemptuous.  We  take  this  duty  too  se 
riously. 

We  sneer  at  a  certain  type  of  author  because 
he  keeps  himself  before  the  public  as  if  he  were 
a  soap.  But  why  in  the  world  should  he  not? 
Why  is  it  so  much  worse  to  work  directly  on  a 
reputation  than  to  work  indirectly  for  it?  We 
have  no  right  to  blame  people  just  because  they 
have  not  an  ascetic  ideal  and  are  not  bound  up  in 
their  art,  with  no  grosser  earthly  wish  than  a 
faint  hope  of  some  day  having  a  handsome  tomb. 
To  take  a  spindling  reputation,  and  by  watering 
266 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

it  and  spading  the  roots  and  killing  the  bugs  on 
the  vines,  turn  it  into  a  fat  garden  esculent  for 
the  nourishment  of  yourself  and  family,  is  some 
thing  of  a  feat.  There  is  no  use  in  affecting  to 
despise  it.  The  man  who  can  do  it  has  a  rare 
skill  and  a  certain  hardiness  of  character  that 
appeal  to  one's  respect.  They  are  not  literary 
qualities,  but  they  are  mighty  in  their  way,  and 
the  rewards  are  fairly  won.  To  coddle  a  young 
reputation  is  one  of  the  most  tiresome  and  ex 
acting  jobs  in  the  whole  world.  A  man  with  a 
real  fondness  for  his  work  will  not  bother  with  it. 
Any  one  who  does  bother  with  it  surely  earns  his 
pay.  Think  what  it  means. 

A  literary  reputation  without  much  to  go 
upon — and  that  is  the  kind  I  have  in  mind — is 
the  most  rickety,  balky,  ill-balanced  thing  im 
aginable.  It  needs  incessant  care  to  keep  it  from 
running  down  or  falling  over  or  having  holes 
punched  in  it  by  the  critics.  A  man  must  live 
with  every  sense  on  the  stretch  for  opportunities 
to  advance  it.  No  means  are  too  humble  or  labo 
rious  or  remote.  Do  you  suppose  it  is  pleasant 
267 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

always  to  be  delivering  addresses  on  birds  before 
distant  kindergartners'  meetings  or  travelling 
through  the  middle  west  of  a  hot  June  in  order 
to  figure  on  commencement  platforms  and  ad 
dress  graduating  classes  on  the  superiority  of 
high  ideals  over  low  ideals?  That  is  a  part  of 
the  work.  So  is  the  reading  from  your  own  books 
and  the  being  interviewed  about  the  influences 
that  made  you  the  man  you  are,  and  the  com 
mittee  work,  and  the  secretaryships,  and  the  long 
talk  at  the  ladies'  afternoon  club,  and  the  insti 
gation  of  the  paragraph,  and  the  praise  of 
kindly  reviewers,  and  the  heading  off  of  critics, 
and  the  writing  of  timely  letters  to  the  press, 
and  the  admiring  of  other  people's  books  so  that 
they  will  admire  yours.  A  man  does  not  do  all 
this  for  the  fun  of  the  thing  or  for  the  mere 
gratification  of  conceit.  It  is  business — a  grim, 
inexorable  business — and  precisely  the  kind  that 
is  most  irksome  to  the  man  of  literary  tastes. 
The  artist  in  publicity  has  no  easy  time. 

Why,  then,  begrudge    him    what    he    earns? 
There  is  nothing  more  unreasonable  than  the  tone 
268 


THE    BUSINESS    OF   WRITING 

of  bitterness  with  which  men  with  some  real  gift 
for  their  calling  refer  to  the  successful  persons 
of  this  class.  As  well  grow  angry  at  the  success 
of  a  green  grocer.  Yet  from  Virgil  to  Pope,  and 
from  Pope  to  Byron,  there  is  an  unbroken  chain 
of  sarcasms  about  these  exasperatingly  indus 
trious  people  who  have  earned  good  wages  and 
filled  unmarked  graves.  And  nowadays  it  is  the 
commonest  thing  in  the  world  to  hear  people  say 
with  an  aggrieved  air,  "Look  at  So-and-so. 
There  is  absolutely  nothing  in  him.  Yet 
see  how  he  keeps  himself  before  the  public,  and 
see  hov/  he  gets  on."  As  if  the  fact  that  there 
isn't  anything  in  him  didn't  make  it  all  the  more 
wonderful  and  interesting  that  he  should  get  on. 
The  acrimonious  comments  upon  the  methods  of 
Miss  Marie  Corelli  and  Mr.  Hall  Caine  and  who 
ever  may  be  their  analogues  for  the  moment  over 
here  are  absurdly  out  of  place.  People  like  that 
are  not  toiling  for  literary  ends,  and  they  do  not 
have  the  pleasure  of  their  craft.  To  them  the 
dull  grind  of  literary  work  is  never  alleviated  by 
the  consciousness  that  the  work  is  good.  As  a 
269 


THE    BUSINESS    OF   WRITING 

compensation  they  should  be  allowed  to  possess 
in  peace  the  objects  that  they  seek  by  such  as 
siduous  and  irksome  methods.  The  man  who  likes 
to  write  has  no  quarrel  with  them.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  curious  art  that  these  people  have  mas 
tered  is  worthy  of  his  dispassionate  study. 


270 


THE    BUSINESS    OF   WRITING 
II 

THE    PRAISE    OF    MINOR    AUTHORS 

THE  queerest  kind  of  writing  we  have  nowadays 
is  that  of  the  men  who  burst  out  every  little  while 
and  say  sweet  things  about  every  living  Amer 
ican  writer  they  can  think  of.  I  have  read  an 
account  in  a  magazine  of  an  imaginary  journey 
from  Indiana  to  the  gulf,  in  which  the  writer 
pays  a  compliment  to  every  local  colorist  on 
either  side  of  the  railway.  "I  kiss  my  hand  to 
the  whole  genial  and  lovable  lot,"  he  says,  as  he 
takes  leave  of  some  district  where  the  tracks  of 
minor  writers  are  particularly  fresh  and  thick. 
And  here  is  J.  L.  Jones's  land,  and  there  shines 
R.  B.  Smithson's  country,  and  yonder  loom  the 
mountains  sacred  to  J.  Cox,  Jr.,  and  this  valley 
is  where  W.  T.  Smiles  "blows  his  flute-tunes." 
Beyond  the  sky-line  is  the  home  of  a  magazine, 
while  far  to  the  southward  the  young  author  of 
certain  wondrous  stories  "lives  quietly  unspoilt 
by  sudden  and  well-deserved  fortune."  And 
"dear  Uncle  Remus"  peeps  at  him  from  Atlanta, 
271 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

and  S.  M.  Pike  warbles  at  him  from  Tuskaloosa, 
and  here  is  a  nest  of  "low-country  geniuses,"  and 
there  is  where  he  met  a  "charming  poet"  years 
ago,  then  "a  bright-eyed  boy  full  of  dreams  and 
rhymes."  This  sort  of  thing  happens,  as  I  said 
before,  every  little  while.  No  matter  how  minute 
the  bard  or  how  imponderable  the  novelist,  his 
greatness  is  found  out. 

Some  say  it  is  a  kind  of  bribery,  a  lie  for  a 
lie  and  a  gush  for  a  gush.  This  theory,  like  that 
of  most  motive-diggers,  goes  too  deep.  It  is 
oftener  a  mere  outburst  of  miscellaneous  affec 
tion,  the  writer  actually  having  a  heart  in  which 
everybody  is  made  welcome  like  the  lobby  of  an 
American  hotel.  And  the  chances  are  that  he 
would  tell  you  that  he  is  encouraging  literature, 
as  if  literary  appreciation  consisted  in  swallow 
ing  everything  whole.  Of  course  there  is  noth 
ing  bad  about  it,  but  the  American  reader  is  apt 
to  feel  as  he  does  when  he  sees  Frenchmen  kiss 
each  other.  And  it  is  not  good  for  any  class  of 
men  to  have  too  much  of  it,  even  when  they  like 
it,  least  of  all  writers,  who  become  idiotic  under 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

flattery  sooner  than  any  other  set  of  people  in 
the  world.  Probably  they  do  not  care  so  much 
about  it  as  is  generally  supposed,  for  one  does 
not  value  even  a  dog  if  he  wags  his  tail  for  every 
body,  and  it  is  the  same  way  with  a  critic.  But 
it  is  not  a  safe  practice  in  the  present  state  of  the 
arts.  We  see  the  effects  of  it  in  the  number  of 
American  writers  who  reach  a  certain  level  of 
attainment  and  then  stop.  Why  should  they  go 
on  when  there  are  hundreds  telling  them  that  they 
have  reached  the  top?  Should  not  a  writer  take 
it  easy  when  he  is  already  "superb"  ?  There  is  a 
long  stretch  in  a  writer's  career  where  the  mo 
mentum  of  his  past  successes  will  carry  him 
along.  His  muse  is  coasting,  as  you  might  say. 
That  is  the  time  when  the  critic  should  do  any 
thing  to  wake  him  up — throw  stones  at  him  and 
make  him  pedal.  It  looks  unfeeling,  but  it  is 
really  for  his  good.  There  are  so  many  ways  of 
capitalizing  a  reputation  that  the  temptation  to 
knock  off  work  is  almost  irresistible.  When  a 
man  reaches  the  point  at  which  he  can  live  hand 
somely  by  reading  from  his  poems  or  signing 
273 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

advertisements  for  soap,  gentle  treatment  will  not 
suffice.  The  old-fashioned  rawhide  of  Macaulay 
or  Jeffreys  may  be  the  only  thing  that  can  save 
him  from  himself.  Mistaken  softness,  like  that 
of  the  writer  quoted,  is  bad  for  us  and  for  them. 
Sixty-five  living  American  novelists  all  destined 
for  posterity,  said  a  critic  not  long  ago ;  hardly 
a  state  in  the  Union  without  a  superb  poet,  said 
another;  every  corner  of  the  country  provided 
with  a  gifted  local  colorist,  said  a  third.  And 
each  was  a  respectable,  middle-aged  person  with 
private  preference  in  the  matter  of  friends,  wives, 
tobacco  and  a  host  of  other  things.  It  is  a 
strange  habit  of  mind. 

There  must  be  a  point  beyond  which  the  praise 
of  an  author  cannot  go  without  making  him 
doubt  the  truth  of  it  or  the  worth  of  it.  In 
defiance  of  many  great  authorities  on  human 
nature  I  hold  that  most  men  do  discern  a  divid 
ing  line  between  appreciation  and  gush  and  feel 
vaguely  uncomfortable  when  that  line  is  passed. 
The  limit  may  be  indefinitely  remote,  but  there 
is  a  limit.  Present  literary  usage  ignores  it  alto- 
374 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

gether.  It  is  in  thorough  accord  with  this  usage 
that  a  literary  journal  will  say  of  a  new  book 
that  even  before  opening  the  covers  you  may  be 
sure  one  of  the  wonders  of  the  world  awaits  you. 
"Here  will  be  no  blurred  or  slighted  words.  .  .  . 
Here  will  be  the  finest  and  best  of  which  the  au 
thor  is  capable.  Nature  herself  will  be  here. 
Here  will  be  supreme  artistry  of  style,  little 
miracles  of  observation,"  and  so  forth.  You  may 
parallel  it  in  almost  any  column  of  literary  com 
ment.  It  is  the  way  the  literary  people  lay  it 
on  nowadays  when  they  like  a  man.  They  some 
times  do  it  just  because  they  like  his  publishers. 
In  this  instance  the  subject  happens  to  be  a 
writer  who  deserves  well  of  us,  but  that  only 
makes  the  matter  worse.  The  intelligence  that 
fits  him  for  the  work  he  does  must  sharpen  his 
disgust  at  this  absurd  overrating  of  it.  It  is  no 
compliment  to  an  author  to  throw  away  all  stand 
ards  and  abrogate  all  common  sense  in  talking  of 
him,  and  whatever  we  may  think  of  literary  van 
ity  the  most  self -esteemed  of  writers  does  make 
distinctions  as  to  the  source  of  praise.  He  values 
275 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

most  the  kind  that  is  accompanied  by  some  evi 
dence  of  a  sound  mind. 

It  is  probable  that  sense  persists  in  an  author 
longer  than  it  is  supposed  to  be.  I  do  not  share 
in  that  low  view  of  authors  which  is  so  prevalent 
in  the  literary  periodicals.  It  is  seldom  that  an 
author  shows  his  claws  and  spits  when  you  stroke 
him,  but  it  does  not  follow  that  he  is  totally  in 
different  to  the  personality  of  the  stroker  or  to 
the  kind  of  stroking.  That  is  where  he  differs 
from  other  kinds  of  pets.  A  cat  would  as  lief 
be  fondled  by  an  idiot  boy  if  he  were  good  to  it. 
An  author  would  not.  This  may  sound  elemen 
tary,  but  it  is  a  fact  that  is  utterly  unknown  to 
hundreds  of  contributors  to  current  literary  com 
ment.  We  sometimes  hear  the  matter  discussed 
from  the  point  of  view  of  the  reader  who  may  be 
disappointed  or  misled,  and  may  complain  that 
criticism  has  fallen  on  evil  days.  But  no  one 
opposes  it  for  the  author's  sake.  He  is  supposed 
to  be  pleased  by  it.  He  is  a  man  and  a  brother, 
and  we  have  no  right  to  assume  that  he  is  not 
above  it.  When  we  write  of  him  as  if  he  were  a 
276 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

new  make  of  motor  car  and  we  owned  stock  in  the 
company,  it  does  not  always  make  him  happy. 

If  possible  one  should  rid  himself  of  that 
cynical  view  of  human  nature  as  always  and 
everywhere  at  the  mercy  of  the  flatterer,  however 
unskilful  he  may  be.  Tell  any  plain  friend  of 
yours  that  his  beauty  makes  you  glad  and  he 
will  lose  patience  with  you.  Compliment  any 
cross-eyed  girl  on  her  lovely  orbs  and  she  will 
fly  out  at  you.  To  a  certain  extent  this  rule  ap 
plies  to  authors,  though  the  limits  are  more  elas 
tic  and  it  is  rare  that  they  openly  revolt.  Here 
and  there  an  honest  author  is  made  to  feel  very 
sheepish  by  those  gorgeous  offerings  of  praise. 
"Supreme  artistry  of  style,"  "miracles  of  obser 
vation,"  "rapture,"  and  "pure  delight"  must  give 
modest  merit  something  of  a  turn.  What  is  left 
over  for  the  out-and-out  divinities?  One  should 
keep  a  few  hosannas  for  the  next  world.  Au 
thors  are  not  all  Bunthornes,  and  they  have  some 
sense  of  relative  values.  They  know  the  differ 
ence  between  the  critic  with  a  standard  of  his 
own  and  the  reviewer  whose  sole  outfit  is  a  vocabu- 
277 


THE    BUSINESS    OF   WRITING 

lary  like  a  billboard.  They  know  it,  and  many 
of  them  suffer  under  certain  kinds  of  eulogy. 
But  the  pity  of  it  is  that  they  suffer  in  silence. 
They  reply  to  their  critics  often  enough,  but  to 
the  men  who  praise  them  foolishly  they  say 
never  a  word.  If  they  would  burst  out  on  some 
rapturous  appreciator  once  in  a  while  and  shake 
him  in  the  full  public  gaze,  it  would  be  a  good 
thing  all  around.  It  would  help  to  remove  some 
misconceptions. 


278 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

III 
THE    PHRASEMAKER 

AN  admirer  of  M.  Emile  Faguet  quotes  a  string 
of  his  phrases  to  illustrate  his  epigrammatic 
style.  Some  of  them  are  worth  repeating  as 
types  of  what  are  sometimes  considered  spark 
ling  or  incisive  sayings.  Of  Gautier,  M.  Faguet 
says,  "He  sets  out  from  nowhere  and  just  there 
he  arrives ;"  of  Voltaire,  "The  prince  of  wits  be 
came  the  god  of  imbeciles ;"  of  Balzac,  "He  has 
no  wit  at  all."  It  is  especially  hard  to  see  why 
the  last  one  should  have  been  picked  out,  but  it 
appears  to  be  highly  prized  by  connoisseurs, 
and,  for  that  matter,  none  of  them  will  seem  won 
derful  to  the  ordinary  mind.  There  is  a  queer 
standard  for  quotable  sayings  just  now  among 
critics,  and  the  simplest  sort  of  statement  may 
turn  out  to  be  an  epigram.  France  has  always 
been  apt  to  sacrifice  too  much  to  her  guilty  love 
of  phrases,  but  of  late  these  phrases  seem  to  have 
deteriorated  like  her  alcoholic  drinks.  A  couple 
of  phrases  still  intoxicate  a  Frenchman,  as 
279 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

Chateaubriand  complained  in  his  day,  but  he  is 
content  with  a  cheaper  brand.  And  ever  since 
a  knot  of  English  playwrights  and  authors  be 
gan  some  years  ago  to  imitate  this  trick  of 
Frenchmen  at  their  worst,  the  phrasemaker  has 
done  considerable  damage  over  here.  Many 
honest  reviewers  have  been  set  gaping  by  simple 
little  verbal  shifts  that  should  be  as  easy  to  learn 
as  punctuation.  Any  writer  who  turns  out  a  fair 
number  of  brief  cynical  sentences,  chiefly  about 
love  and  marriage,  is  sure  to  be  pointed  out  as 
the  possessor  of  a  brilliant  style. 

Why  is  it  that  the  phrasemaker  so  often  miser 
ably  fails  of  effect?  He  is  an  industrious  per 
son,  and  industry  ought  to  tell  here  as  well  as 
anywhere  else.  You  cannot  explain  exactly  that 
impression  of  artificiality,  but  it  is  as  unmis 
takable  as  blondined  hair.  For  one  thing,  the 
phrasemaker  betrays  an  undue  consciousness  of 
words,  which  is  quite  as  fatal  as  an  undue  con 
sciousness  of  clothes.  When  a  well-known  writer, 
lecturing  on  the  stage,  said  that  the  modern  play 
was  a  compound  of  "devil,  drivel  and  snivel," 
280 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

everybody  knew  that  he  worked  like  a  Trojan 
for  that  phrase  and  valued  it  very  highly,  and 
hoped  it  would  be  noticed  and  perhaps  envied  a 
little  by  other  phrasemakers  who  had  not  said  it. 
For  any  one  who  has  seen  much  of  phrasemakers 
knows  how  they  smack  their  lips  over  their  own 
good  things  and  how  a  shade  of  regret  passes 
over  their  faces  before  they  give  the  successful 
rival  his  deserved  applause.  One  knows,  too,  that 
those  airy  little  cynicisms  that  are  tossed  off  on 
the  spur  of  the  moment  have  been  hammered  out 
most  painfully  long  before. 

But  the  labor  spent  on  them  is  not  the  main 
thing.  It  is  the  fact  that  something  about  them 
lets  you  know  the  labor  has  been  spent.  You  can 
not  cherish  any  illusion  of  spontaneity.  Yet  that 
is  just  what  one  wants  to  do  with  a  work  of  art. 
It  may  be  that  a  man  of  real  gifts  as  a  writer 
will  toil  four  days  and  a  night  for  a  fit  word ;  but 
that  does  not  mean  a  fit  word  for  his  audience, 
but  only  for  his  own  idea.  This  process  the 
phrasemaker  exactly  inverts.  He  does  not  care 
a  rap  for  the  thought  or  the  fact  or  the  real  look 
281 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

of  the  thing  he  is  trying  to  describe.  He  will 
sacrifice  any  part  of  it  to  a  phrase  that  sounds 
well.  So  every  sentence  is  a  sort  of  compromise, 
and  never  really  means  all  it  seems  to.  He  is  con 
stantly  changing  his  mental  route  in  order  to 
take  in  catchy  phrases.  Then  the  best  half  of 
his  mind  is  always  on  the  public,  wondering  if 
this  or  that  thing  will  not  strike  them  as  being 
pretty  good.  Worse  than  that,  he  stores  up  in 
his  head  a  lot  of  little  antithetical  jingles  or  in 
verted  truisms,  thinking  he  will  some  time  use 
them  as  impromptus,  and  he  does  use  them,  too, 
the  cold-blooded  old  humbug. 

It  is  the  most  insidious  vice  of  the  literary 
temperament,  and  critics  generally  do  not  suffi 
ciently  warn  people  of  the  danger.  Mr.  How- 
ells  makes  one  of  his  heroes  jot  down  his  happy 
phrases  in  a  note  book  in  the  hope  that  they  will 
figure  in  some  future  work  of  his  as  literary 
gems.  Mr.  Barrie  makes  one  of  his  characters 
do  the  same.  Neither  of  these  people  ended 
badly,  as  they  ought  to  have  if  the  writers  had 
been  conscientious.  They  were  represented  as 
282 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

merely  taking  a  legitimate  step  in  their  literary 
career,  and  they  were  fairly  successful.  It  was  a 
bad  moral.  Outside  books  they  would  have  be 
come  phrasemakers  and  would  have  attained  no 
higher  place  than  that  which  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes  sank  to  a  few  times  in  an  otherwise  blame 
less  life.  What  a  difference  between  the  phrase- 
maker  and  the  man  whose  thought  insists  on  the 
words  and  gets  them  and  who  has  no  clot  of  ink 
on  his  brain. 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WHITING 

IV 
THE  PURSUIT  OF  HUMOR 

WHILE  we  Americans  can  never  have  too  much 
humor,  we  can  hear  too  much  about  it.  I  once 
followed  a  long  controversy  on  the  subject  in  the 
newspapers,  especially  on  the  question  whether 
women  ever  possess  this  quality  in  their  own 
right.  It  was  a  very  solemn  affair  and  a  little 
tedious.  Running  through  it  all  was  an  under 
current  of  irritability,  for  these  people  would 
insist  on  citing  cases  in  point,  and  just  as  soon 
as  any  one  is  rash  enough  to  illustrate  what  he 
means  by  humor  all  hope  of  a  peaceful  discus 
sion  is  gone.  It  is  a  rule  alike  for  man  and  au 
thor  never  to  illustrate  in  this  matter.  Disap 
pointment  is  sure  to  follow,  and  sometimes  hate. 
Even  George  Meredith  becomes  an  object  of 
scorn  when  he  gives  us  samples  of  Diana's  jokes. 
A  definite  promise  of  humor  is  always  irredeem 
able.  Then  there  was  an  extreme  jealousy  among 
the  disputants  lest  any  one  should  seem  to  be 
claiming  more  than  his  share.  First  one  would 
884 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

come  out  with  a  scientific  definition  of  it  and  a 
general  air  of  mastership.  Then  another  would 
show  him  up  as  an  impostor,  and  in  so  doing  try 
and  give  the  impression  that  he  had  a  rather  neat 
turn  for  it  himself.  Like  all  discussions  of  hu 
mor,  it  was  strenuous  and  was  accompanied  by 
the  sound  of  heavy  blows. 

Now  it  is  the  commonest  thing  in  the  world  to 
hear  people  call  the  absence  of  a  sense  of  humor 
the  one  fatal  defect.  No  matter  how  owlish  a 
man  is,  he  will  tell  you  that.  It  is  a  miserable 
falsehood,  and  it  does  incalculable  harm.  A  life 
without  humor  is  like  a  life  without  legs.  You 
are  haunted  by  a  sense  of  incompleteness,  arid 
you  cannot  go  where  your  friends  go.  You  are 
also  somewhat  of  a  burden.  But  the  only  really 
fatal  thing  is  the  shamming  of  humor  when  you 
have  it  not.  We  have  praised  it  so  much  that 
we  have  started  an  insincere  cult,  and  there  are 
many  who  think  they  must  glorify  it  when  they 
hate  it  from  the  bottom  of  their  hearts.  False 
humor-worship  is  the  deadliest  of  social  sins,  and 
one  of  the  commonest.  People  without  a  grain 
285 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

of  humor  in  their  composition  will  eulogize  it  by 
the  hour.  Men  will  confess  to  treason,  murder, 
arson,  false  teeth  or  a  wig.  How  many  of  them 
will  own  up  to  a  lack  of  humor?  The  courage 
that  could  draw  this  confession  from  a  man  would 
atone  for  everything.  No  good  can  come  from 
the  mad  attempts  to  define  humor,  but  there 
might  be  some  advantage  in  determining  how 
people  should  behave  toward  it.  The  first  law  is 
that  humor  is  never  overtaken  when  chased,  or 
propitiated  when  praised.  It  is  the  one  valuable 
thing  which  it  is  worth  no  man's  while  to  work 
for.  If  this  could  only  be  learned,  one  of  the 
gloomiest  and  most  nefarious  of  industries  would 
be  banished  from  the  world. 

So,  whether  it  is  a  man  or  a  woman,  or  a 
weekly  paper  or  a  department  of  a  magazine,  the 
best  advice  in  case  of  a  deliberate  attempt  in  this 
field  is  to  give  it  up  altogether.  No  one  with  any 
tenderness  of  heart  wants  to  be  the  witness  of  that 
awful  struggle.  When  the  laborers  in  this  vine 
yard  take  pains  they  always  give  them.  That 
is  the  unhappy  result  of  these  discussions  and  of 
286 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

our  indiscriminate  praise.  Heavy-footed  per 
sons  start  off  in  pursuit  and  the  underbrush  of 
light  literature  is  always  crashing  with  the  noise 
of  their  unwieldy  bodies.  What  is  gained  by 
these  periodical  battues?  No  one  ever  bags  any 
thing,  and  the  frightened  little  animal  is  more 
seldom  seen  than  ever.  People  should  be  more 
cautious  in  what  they  say  about  humor.  If  there 
were  less  said  about  it  there  might  be  more  of 
the  thing  itself,  for  the  anxious  seeker  ransacks 
these  discussions  for  guiding  principles  and 
starts  grimly  off  on  the  trail.  He  becomes  a 
quasi-humorist  with  a  system.  Is  there  any 
thing  worse?  In  spite  of  the  service  which  real 
humor  renders,  one  may  honestly  doubt  whether 
it  offsets  the  injuries  committed  in  its  name. 
There  are  people  whom  nature  meant  to  be 
solemn  from  their  cradle  to  their  grave.  They 
are  under  bonds  to  remain  so.  In  so  far  as  they 
are  true  to  themselves  they  are  safe  company  for 
any  one;  but  outside  their  proper  field  they  are 
terrible.  Solemnity  is  relatively  a  blessing,  and 
the  man  who  was  born  with  it  should  never  be 
287 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

encouraged  to  wrench  himself  away.  A  solemn 
mind  out  of  joint — that  is  what  happens  when 
the  humorous  ambition  o'erleaps  itself.  It  is  the 
commonest  of  accidents  in  this  hunting  field. 

And  another  rule  worth  observing  is  that 
humor  never  works  well  when  harnessed  to  a 
grudge.  A  writer  tried  to  put  it  to  this  use  only 
the  other  day.  His  resolute  attempt  to  make  fun 
of  his  political  enemies  took  the  form  of  mention 
ing  them  one  by  one  and  remarking  in  each  case 
that  they  were  "positively  funny."  People  often 
refer  to  others  as  "positively  funny"  when  what 
they  really  want  to  do  is  to  garrote  them ;  as  if  a 
thing  conceived  in  darkness  and  shapen  in  malig 
nity  became  humor  by  the  invocation  of  the  name. 
This  is  worse  than  the  ordinary  style  of  pursuit. 
It  is  the  press-gang  method. 


288 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

V 

THE    TEMPTATION    OF    AUTHORS 

THE  devil  does  not  have  to  take  the  author  to 
any  mountain  top  in  order  to  tempt  him.  It  is 
much  simpler.  He  merely  sends  around  a  smooth 
agent  with  orders  to  make  a  contract  with  that 
author  on  any  terms — on  no  account  to  come 
away  without  the  promise  of  an  article  or  a  book. 
We  seldom  hear  what  really  goes  on  at  these  in 
terviews,  but  their  general  results  appear  plainly 
enough  from  the  publishers'  lists  and  the  files  of 
the  magazines.  It  does  not  seem  as  if  the  success 
ful  American  author  could  refuse  many  jobs. 
The  bulk  of  what  he  writes  and  the  nature  of  the 
topics  he  writes  on  indicate  that  by  the  proper 
means  he  can  be  urged  to  a  pretty  smart  pace  in 
the  matter  of  turning  out  copy.  The  beginner 
always  dreams  of  the  blessed  day  when  the  pub 
lisher  will  have  to  seek  him,  not  he  the  publishers, 
and  he  usually  pictures  himself  as  repelling 
many  of  them  with  some  sternness,  for  of  what 
use  is  success  if  it  does  not  enable  you  to  choose 
289 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

your  own  time  and  your  own  subjects  and  break 
away  from  the  odious  bondage  to  the  pot-boiler? 
Obscure  merit  glows  all  over  at  this  view  of  him 
self  repulsing  great  crowds  of  publishers  and 
editors  with  a  few  trenchant  words  about  his  ar 
tistic  integrity.  The  chances  are  he  has  quite 
a  collection  of  polite  sarcasms  stored  up 
against  that  day — things  which  would  look 
rather  well  in  print  in  case  the  newspapers 
should  report  them,  as  they  undoubtedly 
would,  in  spite  of  his  reticence  about  the 
affair. 

But  the  temptation  is  too  subtle  and  too  many 
good  men  have  succumbed  to  it  to  warrant  this 
high  confidence.  The  constant  draining  of  our 
well-known  authors  is  one  of  the  saddest  things 
in  current  literature.  Apparently  there  is  no 
age  and  no  degree  of  success  that  is  safe  from  it. 
You  might  think  that  toward  the  close  of  a  long 
and  honorable  literary  career  a  man  would  feel 
entitled  to  the  luxury  of  writing  only  when  and 
what  he  pleased.  Yet  no  sooner  does  he  reach 
that  point  than  he  pours  out  a  perfect  flood  of 
290 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

articles  and  interviews  on  subjects  that  it  must 
bore  him  to  death  to  think  of.  You  find  him  dis 
coursing  in  any  kind  of  newspaper  or  magazine 
about  things  that  no  unfettered  human  mind 
would  linger  on  for  five  minutes.  The  success 
ful  author  is  like  the  department  store.  There 
is  no  corner  of  periodical  literature  where  you  do 
not  see  his  delivery  wagon,  and  there  is  no  end 
to  the  variety  of  goods  delivered.  Sin,  free  sil 
ver,  mother's  love  and  the  books  that  helped  him, 
success,  football  and  the  fear  of  death — any 
thing  under  the  sun  seems  successively  to  at 
tract  that  serviceable  mind.  That  he  really 
would  write  on  those  things  if  left  to  himself  few 
are  so  cynical  as  to  believe.  Good  authors  are 
not  by  nature  rapid-firing.  If  they  become  so, 
you  may  be  sure  somebody  has  been  tampering 
with  them.  An  author  is  like  a  clock.  Let  an 
editor  fool  with  him  and  set  him  to  striking  all 
the  hours  at  once  and  he  is  out  of  order  forever 
afterward. 

An  enterprising  editor  once  took  it  into  his 
head  that  the  public  would  be  much  interested  in 
291 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

reading  the  answers  of  a  number  of  persons,  each 
eminent  in  his  line,  to  the  question,  What  do  you 
fear  most?  So  he  arranged  a  "symposium"  of 
millionaires,  dancers,  actresses,  railway  mag 
nates,  politicians,  authors  and  other  worthies, 
each  of  whom  contributed  an  essay  or  an  inter 
view  on  this  subject.  Thus  the  eager  public  had 
a  chance  to  compare  the  fears  of  the  successful 
politician  with  the  fears  of  the  man  who  had 
made  his  fortune  in  steel.  The  author  who  took 
part  in  this  brilliant  affair — and  he  was  one  of 
the  best  we  have — supplied  an  essay  to  the  ef 
fect  that  young  people  feared  death  more  than 
old  people,  and  that  old  people  feared  the  loss 
of  money  more  than  young  people,  and  that  fear 
was  an  attitude  of  mind  that  tended  to  produce 
cowardice.  What  did  it  mean?  Merely  that 
something  had  to  be  written.  No  mind,  how 
ever  strong  it  may  have  been  at  the  start,  can 
hold  out  when  it  is  treated  like  that.  A  man's 
whole  soul  is  in  danger  of  being  waterlogged 
when  he  dilutes  his  thoughts  to  that  ex 
tent. 

•M 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

The  danger  in  spreading  one's  self  thin  is  that 
the  time  surely  comes  when  it  is  done  uncon 
sciously.  A  man  thinks  it  is  his  thought  that  is 
flowing  on  like  that  when  it  is  only  his  ink. 
There  are  few  people  to  warn  him  because  there 
are  few  that  know  the  difference.  People  gen 
erally  do  not  realize  that  authors  are  deliquescent 
and  should  be  kept  in  a  dry  place.  Then  the 
temptation  to  the  author  assumes  such  virtuous 
form.  There  is  thrift,  for  instance.  It  is  a  vir 
tue  which  we  humble  folk  may  safely  strive  for. 
But  thrift  ruins  more  authors  than  all  the  vices 
put  together.  As  a  man  he  may  have  as  hand 
some  a  set  of  private  morals  as  you  ever  saw, 
and  yet  as  an  author  be  going  to  the  dogs  at 
lightning  speed.  Journeywork  does  the  thing 
oftener  than  either  opium  or  absinthe.  Can  the 
"muse"  fill  orders  every  day?  If  it  does,  how 
does  it  differ  from  that  despised  thing,  jour 
nalism?  That  the  majority  of  writers  should 
do  this  sort  of  thing  implies  no  waste  at  all.  If 
they  waited  all  their  lives  probably  nothing  bet 
ter  would  occur  to  them.  But  that  the  mind  of 
293 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

an  estimable  author  should  be  for  rent  for  every 
purpose  is  a  wicked  and  incongruous  thing.  It 
is  like  the  chartering  of  a  United  States  battle 
ship  for  every  clam  bake. 


£94 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

VI 
THE   JOURNALIST   AND    HIS    BETTERS 

How  FOND  people  are  of  trying  to  define  the 
boundary  between  journalism  and  literature. 
There  is  never  a  time  when  some  writer  is  not 
pegging  away  at  it.  Failure  cannot  discourage 
or  reiteration  stale,  and  we  may  as  well  expect 
to  see  the  same  thing  tried  in  almost  the  same 
language  every  day  for  the  rest  of  our  lives. 
In  one  of  the  recent  attempts  the  investigator 
decides  that  the  difference  between  journalism 
and  literature  is  that,  while  journalistic  work  is 
done  with  the  expectation  that  it  will  soon  perish, 
literary  work  is  done  "in  the  high  hope  that  it 
might  be  eternal."  This  definition  has  the  merit 
of  perfect  clearness  as  well  as  ease  of  applica 
tion  by  squarely  dividing  the  two  according  to 
the  self-confidence  of  the  writer.  If  he  is  the 
kind  of  man  who  is  tolerably  sure  that  he  and 
eternity  were  made  for  each  other,  he  is  a  literary 
person.  If  he  suspects  that  the  eternal  may  have 
no  use  for  him,  he  is  a  journalist.  Now,  there  is 
295 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

no  use  in  a  newspaper  man's  trying  to  debate  this 
matter.  He  is  bound  to  get  the  worst  of  it.  It 
is  a  reckless  thing  to  stand  up  against  a  man 
who  knows  he  is  eternal  and  all  that.  Still  there 
are  a  good  many  light  literary  characters  who 
may  have  some  misgivings  about  their  eternity, 
and  these  he  dares  address,  though,  of  course, 
with  deference,  for  he  cannot  conceive  of  any 
thing  nearer  eternity  in  his  own  case  than  the 
intervals  between  stations  on  the  elevated  road. 

To  these  literary  persons  he  feels  drawn  by  the 
consciousness  of  a  common  destiny.  Apart  from 
the  natural  enthusiasm  of  their  respective  widows, 
oblivion  in  each  case  will  set  in  about  four  days 
after  death.  There  are  no  class  distinctions  in 
the  land  of  the  forgotten.  As  between  the  lum 
ber  room  and  the  waste  basket  there  is  little 
choice.  But  while  the  doom  is  precisely  the  same 
for  the  majority  of  each  profession,  the  news 
paper  man  has  this  great  advantage.  He  knows 
what  this  doom  will  be,  and  is  ready  for  it,  and  be- 
does  not  waste  five  minutes  of  his  life  in  worrying 
about  it  one  way  or  the  other.  At  least  he  is  not 
296 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

laying  up  for  himself  a  disappointed  ghosthood, 
and  it  is  pretty  certain  that  the  shades  of  some 
exceedingly  literary  persons  will  be  terribly  an 
noyed  by  what  is  going  to  happen  to  their  works 
after  death.  And  there  is  another  burden  that 
the  newspaper  man  is  free  from.  He  does  not 
have  to  talk  in  such  a  very  large  way  about  his 
work  as  art,  or  to  feel  oppressed  with  that  sense 
of  responsibility  for  nature's  priceless  gifts.  Be 
ing  without  worries  of  this  kind,  he  has  more 
chance  to  meet  people  on  equal  and  agreeable 
terms.  That  is  the  great  thing  about  being  un- 
literary  and  uneternal.  You  do  not  have  any  of 
those  dreadfully  serious  duties  toward  yourself. 
You  are  not  obliged  to  sing  psalms  to  the  holy 
things  inside  you  or  to  act  as  if  you  were  a  special 
little  ark  of  the  covenant  for  something  that  no 
one  but  yourself  knows  the  value  of.  That  leaves 
you  leisure  and  a  light  heart — a  low  level,  but 
with  its  humble  joys.  A  newspaper  man  does  not 
envy  the  general  run  of  authors.  He  would  be 
scared  to  death  by  the  consciousness  of  all  that 
talent.  Indeed,  if  he  should  ever  feel  inside  him 
297 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

what  certain  literary  characters  sometimes  call 
their  "muse,"  he  would  see  a  doctor  and  take 
something  for  it. 

For  if  there  is  one  thing  in  the  world  that 
would  embarrass  an  honest  journalist  it  is  the 
obligation  to  exhibit  a  handsome  diction  with 
never  a  single  fact  or  thought  to  hang  it  on — 
to  keep  a  sort  of  show  window  of  word  millinery 
as  a  sign  that  first-rate  literary  work  is  done 
inside.  But  people  who  say  they  have  the 
"muses"  do  not  seem  to  mind  this  sort  of  thing 
in  the  least.  Thought  is  only  a  clothes-line  to 
them,  anyhow.  It  is  not  wise  for  the  people  who 
are  just  across  the  border  to  sniff  so  at  the  news 
paper  man,  lowly  though  he  be.  What  is  the 
use  in  their  rigging  things  out  for  eternity  when 
they  cannot  reach  the  middle  of  next  week? 
The  newspaper  man  cannot  make  his  words  sing, 
as  Stevenson  said,  but  at  least  he  is  spared  the 
awkwardness  of  being  the  only  person  who 
knows  that  they  are  singing.  And  since  words 
will  not  always  sing,  why  is  it  not  a  good  plan 
even  in  light  literature  to  have  an  idea  or  two 
298 


THE    BUSINESS    OF   WRITING 

to  fall  back  upon  ?  And  if  you  have  not  an  idea, 
find  a  fact.  Literature  should  not  be  so  light  that 
you  do  not  feel  it.  Surely  there  are  many  au 
thors  who  are  merely  journalists  of  a  slower 
breed.  The  journalist  is  not  as  a  rule  sensitive, 
but  he  does  not  believe  that  there  is  an  aristocracy 
of  failure.  What  has  eternity  to  do  with  the  rank 
and  file  of  either  class? 

When  the  two  professions  have  so  much  in 
common  it  seems  foolish  to  be  bothering  about 
boundaries.  It  would  be  better  to  unite  against 
the  common  enemy  of  both.  There  is  a  kind  of 
man  who  has  no  business  in  either.  He  is  the 
man  with  the  inveterate  vice  of  having  nothing 
to  say.  He  is  superfluous  even  in  a  Sunday  issue. 
He  confounds  tenuity  with  refinement,  and  pub 
lishes  a  volume  on  the  strength  of  one  etiolated 
idea.  Say  what  you  will  about  style,  mere  gram 
mar  will  not  make  an  author,  even  if  the  gram 
mar  is  superb.  A  literary  aspirant  once  wrote  to 
a  publisher  that  she  could  write  well  if  she  only 
had  ideas.  This  idea  of  style  is  as  injurious  in 
what  is  classed  as  literature  as  in  the  daily  papers. 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

Those  smoothly  rounded  sentences,  each  one  the 
assassin  of  a  thought,  those  pastels  in  prose 
which  are  nothing  but  prose,  and  those  extremely 
emaciated  essays  are  neither  journalism  nor 
literature.  Dilution  is  the  one  thing  that  is 
fatal,  whether  it  is  "literary"  or  not,  and  a  high 
hoping  for  the  eternal  only  makes  it  worse.  No 
matter  where  the  line  be  drawn,  it  should  not  in 
clude  this,  for  things  perish  quicker  for  lack 
of  substance  than  for  lack  of  form.  The  real 
dread  of  the  honest  followers  of  either  craft 
should  be  the  dread  of  spreading  themselves  thin, 
and  if  the  year's  production  of  books  could  be 
piled  up  alongside  its  periodicals  it  would  be  hard 
to  say  which  class  had  sinned  the  more.  But  this 
thing  is  certain.  No  member  of  either  would  be 
a  whit  the  worse  for  the  good  qualities  of  the 
other. 


300 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

VII 
RUNNING   AN    ORACLE 

ONE  of  the  pleasantest  lines  of  newspaper  work 
is  the  composition  of  those  editorial  articles  on 
foreign  politics  which  unmask  the  designs  of  the 
great  powers  and  explain  what  is  known  as  a 
"world  movement."  It  is  work  that  confers  dig 
nity  on  the  writer  from  the  impressive  nature  of 
the  material  with  which  it  deals.  It  is  not  scruti 
nized  as  sharply  as  other  kinds  of  work,  because 
it  takes  one's  breath  away  at  the  start.  Very  few 
people,  for  example,  distinguished  between  the 
articles  on  the  Chinese  situation  which  the  news 
papers  were  obliged  to  publish  every  other  day. 
They  like  to  see  such  articles  on  an  editorial  page 
as  a  sign  that  the  paper  is  keeping  up  with  the 
times ;  but  so  long  as  they  all  have  the  air  of  cer 
tainty  they  are  all  equally  able  and  authoritative. 
The  man  who  can  speak  familiarly  as  to  what  the 
"Russian  Colossus"  is  up  to,  and  what  France 
thinks  about  it,  has  everything  in  his  own 
hands.  Nobody  thinks  of  checking  him  off.  That 
301 


THE    BUSINESS    OF   WRITING 

familiar  tone  does  the  business.  World  politics 
afford  the  one  sinecure  in  the  newspaper  profes 
sion.  In  general  these  articles  conform  to  one  of 
two  types.  There  is  the  solemnly  judicious  ar 
ticle,  which,  though  masterly,  is  found,  on  analy 
sis,  to  be  somewhat  non-committal.  And  there  is 
the  article  of  mysterious  sources. 

Here  is  a  model  article  of  the  former  type 
on  the  future  of  China.  "It  looks  very  much 
indeed  as  if  an  acute  crisis  were  impending  in 
China,"  says  the  writer  in  the  sure,  firm  style 
with  which  these  experts  approach  their  subjects. 
But  the  true  spirit  of  this  kind  of  writing  ap 
pears  in  the  following  sentence :  "Anything  may 
happen  in  China  in  the  next  six  months,  or  noth 
ing  may  happen."  That  shows  the  practiced 
hand.  The  soundest  editorial  articles  on  world 
politics  are  built  on  these  imperishable  founda 
tions.  What,  then,  is  China's  future?  That  will 
depend  on  the  issue  of  the  next  six  months.  If 
nothing  happens,  there  is  no  reason  to  expect  any 
very  radical  changes.  If,  on  the  other  hand, 
things  do  happen,  then  changes  of  the  deepest 
302 


THE    BUSINESS    OF   WRITING 

and  most  far-reaching  importance  are  almost 
certain  to  occur.  These  things  being  so,  the 
writer  says:  "It  may  be  well  to  look  dispassion 
ately  at  general  conditions  and  at  future  pros 
pects."  What  do  we  find?  We  notice  first  that 
the  forces  at  work  in  China  "are  both  internal 
and  external;"  there  is  a  force  that  makes  for 
progress  and  a  force  that  does  not.  The  rest  is  in 
keeping  with  this.  The  significant  thing  about 
it  is  permanence  and  universality.  It  will  apply 
as  well  to  the  future  of  Austria-Hungary  and 
the  German  empire  when  the  occasion  arises.  The 
result  of  its  success  is  the  saying  of  obvious 
things  with  the  air  of  having  all  the  powers  at 
the  other  end  of  a  private  wire. 

To  run  these  oracles  all  any  one  needs  is  a 
war  rumor  and  a  copy  of  the  Statesman's  Year 
Book  and  a  solemn  manner.  If  the  news  is  true, 
then  it  is  indeed  serious.  There  are  some  aspects 
of  the  situation  which  you  cannot  but  view  with 
grave  anxiety.  Will  the  Russian  bear  show  his 
claws?  "It  is  not  generally  known  that"  and 
"People  who  look  beneath  the  surface  of  things 
303 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

say"  are  good  and  well-tried  expressions.  You 
should  also  own  a  few  "undercurrents  of  political 
opinion."  These  are  to  be  found  at  any  time  in 
a  single  article  in  a  foreign  review,  but  it  is 
wiser  not  to  quote  the  author,  as  it  sounds  better 
to  say,  "In  certain  quarters  the  view  is  held." 
The  quickest  way  to  get  at  the  very  core  of 
world  politics  is  through  the  pages  of  one  of 
these  articles.  Some  of  the  weightiest  inside  in 
formation  articles,  whose  writer  you  might  sup 
pose  had  been  hiding  under  the  table  at  every 
cabinet  meeting  in  Europe,  are  made  in  this  way. 
We  have,  of  course,  men  who  are  well  versed  in 
these  subjects,  and  who  put  their  own  brains  into 
their  work.  But  the  point  is  that  these  qualifica 
tions  are  not  necessary  for  the  running  of  an 
oracle  on  foreign  politics.  With  the  weighty 
manner  one  fares  quite  as  well.  The  man  who 
says  "Anything  may  happen  in  China  in  the  next 
six  months,  or  nothing  may  happen"  has  as  large 
an  audience.  He  is  respected  and  liked.  It  is 
a  comfortable  and  an  honorable  life,  and  in  spite 
of  competition  the  earnings  are  enormous  in  pro- 
304 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

portion  to  the  labor  involved.  As  a  people  we 
may  be  suspicious  about  some  things  and  not  bad 
hands  at  a  bargain,  but  the  man  who  runs  an 
oracle  is  apt  to  find  us  a  good  thing. 


305 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

VIII 
FOR   WOMAN    AND    THE    HOME 

AN  article  published  some  time  ago  in  an  im 
portant  London  magazine  shows  what  a  serious- 
minded  British  editor  sometimes  thinks  of  his 
public.  The  writer  tells  us  that  woman  should 
be  womanly,  that  she  should  be  intelligent  and  at 
the  same  time  kind;  that,  "above  all,  nothing 
should  be  done  to  diminish  the  immense  fund  of 
affection  stored  up  in  women's  hearts."  "We 
might  possibly  spare  science  and  philosophy," 
says  he ;  "we  might  certainly  spare  many  inven 
tions,  but  we  could  not  spare  from  the  world  a 
mother's  love."  And  lest  some  of  his  readers  may 
still  be  unconvinced,  he  adds  that  while  it  is  bet 
ter  that  woman  should  know  "how  to  cook  an 
appetizing  dinner  for  the  tired  husband  than 
how  to  chatter  about  Shelley,"  she  ought  not  to 
be  entirely  untaught.  He  is  radical  on  that 
point,  arguing  with  much  earnestness  against 
leaving  her  in  her  wild  native  state,  for  she  "is 
not  likely  to  love  husband,  brother  or  child  the 
306 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

more  because  she  is  ignorant  and  helpless."  But 
he  advises  caution  in  applying  this  principle. 
The  wild  woman  who  cooks  may  lose  something 
in  transition,  just  as  strawberries  lose  flavor  when 
cultivated,  or  gallinaceous  birds  when  domesti 
cated.  How  domesticate  the  partridge  without 
diminishing  the  gamy  flavor;  how  teach  woman 
to  read  Shelley  without  loss  of  true  womanhood? 
That  is  the  problem.  While  opposed  to  any 
thing  like  overeducation,he  believes  that  the  mind 
of  woman  should  receive  some  attention  for  two 
reasons :  First,  she  is  a  companion  to  man.  He 
approves  of  this  and  thinks  it  ought  to  be  en 
couraged.  "Let  the  idea  of  companionship  be 
tween  man  and  woman  prevail  more,"  he  says. 
Secondly,  her  education  will  be  useful  to  the 
children.  On  this  point,  and  in  finally  summing 
up,  he  says : 

"Nothing  could  be  more  delightful,  more  help 
ful,  both  to  mother  and  child,  than  a  common 
interest  in  things  of  the  mind.  The  children 
should  not  look  on  the  mother  as  a  kind  of  house 
hold  slave  who  looks  after  the  dinner  and  who 
packs  them  off  to  school ;  nor  should  the  mother 

307 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

think  of  the  children  as  so  many  little  faces  and 
hands  to  be  washed  or  so  many  little  mouths  to  be 
fed.  .  .  .  Indeed,  we  suggest  that  a  new  and 
brighter  meaning  might  be  given  to  home  by  a 
judicious  education  and  a  wise  liberty  to  her  by 
whose  loving  activity  and  goodness  home  is 
made." 

The  article  is  unsigned,  but  it  was  probably 
written  by  a  man.  Most  of  this  kind  of  writing 
is  done  by  men,  and  there  is  a  great  deal  of  it. 
The  significance  of  this  particular  case  is  that 
the  thing  appears  in  a  magazine  meant  for  full- 
grown  men  and  women  of  this  world,  not  for  a 
constituency  of  apple-cheeked  cherubs.  But 
there  is  this  much  to  be  said  for  the  writer:  Of 
all  subjects  in  current  literature  woman  is  the 
one  that  draws  out  the  worst  there  is  in  man.  An 
odd  change  comes  over  him  when  woman  is  his 
theme — a  sort  of  sea-change,  judged  by  the 
wateriness  of  the  results.  And  does  it  please  wo 
man?  Does  the  mother  heart  glow  at  the  sight 
of  the  strong  man  simpering  in  his  beard,  and  is 
there  no  mother  head  to  take  offense  at  him? 
Surely  more  things  might  be  taken  for  granted 
308 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

by  the  writer  on  women  and  the  home.  Let  him 
try  talking  like  this  to  her  face  and  see  what  hap 
pens.  That  is  a  fair  test.  One  thing  that  makes 
man  write  of  woman  as  he  does  is  the  knowledge 
that  she  cannot  get  at  him.  Certainly  you  may 
read  your  Shelley,  and  even  a  little  thinking  will 
not  hurt,  but  not  too  much,  mind,  and  do  not  for 
get  to  beam  on  the  tired  husband.  Heat  his  slip 
pers  for  him,  wash  the  children,  cook  the  din 
ner  ;  then  crouch  behind  the  storm  door  to  spring 
out  and  beam  the  minute  you  hear  him  scuffling 
on  the  door  mat.  Beam  thoroughly,  then  out 
with  a  blast  of  Shelley  at  him.  There  you  have 
the  true  woman,  though  educated:  mother  heart 
true  as  steel,  affections  sound,  husband  fed,  chil 
dren  washed,  and  yet  the  savage  bride  now  reads 
light  literature.  Thus  is  the  sex  problem  solved 
and  civilization  may  go  on  with  perfect  confi 
dence. 

Woman  is  unfortunate  in  her  advisers.     What 

a  time  of  it  we  should  have  if  she  deliberately  set 

out  to  make  home  happy  by  the  rules  laid  down 

for  her.    What  with  the  routine  beaming  and  the 

309 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

scheduled  companionship  and  the  memorized 
home  thoughts,  where  would  the  tired  husband 
be?  You  would  find  that  haggard  refugee  nest 
ing  in  a  tree-top.  But  there  is  no  danger  of  it. 
The  only  serious  question  is  that  of  journalistic 
standards.  Why  do  we  dedicate  to  woman  and 
the  home  the  most  demented  portions  of  our 
periodicals  ? 

Not  in  a  spirit  of  chivalry,  but  of  common 
fairness,  I  hold  that  there  is  no  such  intellectual 
disparity  between  the  sexes  as  would  appear  from 
these  writings.  The  women  one  ordinarily  meets 
are  not  at  the  level  of  the  usual  woman's  page 
or  of  the  average  magazine  for  women.  Women 
read  these  things,  of  course,  but  chiefly  for  tech 
nical  information,  for  suggestions  as  to  pickles 
or  finger  bowls,  or  things  to  put  on  hats — which 
occult  and  complicated  matters  have  as  much 
right  to  a  literature  of  their  own  as  entomology 
— and  no  one  can  despise  the  intellect  that  follows 
them  in  all  their  abstruse  windings.  But  what 
I  have  in  mind  are  the  non-technical  articles  in 
regard  to  which  man  and  woman  are  on  an  equal 
310 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

footing.  Why  write  so  very  far  down  just  be 
cause  you  are  writing  for  women?  And  why  do 
women  not  resent  the  practice? 

Here  is  a  typical  passage  from  a  typical  lit 
erary  article  in  a  woman's  magazine.  Tht  writer 
explains  for  the  benefit  of  women's  clubs  how 
Browning  should  be  studied  and  what  blessings 
result  from  the  study.  He  says :  "When  one  has 
mastered  Browning's  conception  of  the  nature  of 
love  and  of  the  ends  of  art  and  its  spiritual  sig 
nificance,  he  is  well  on  the  way  to  the  poet's  view 
of  life."  Fancy  a  string  of  similar  passages  run 
ning  through  three  or  four  pages,  and  you  have  a 
fair  picture  of  what  the  woman  of  culture  is  sup 
posed  to  like.  It  is  true  with  the  truth  of  the  first 
spelling  book.  It  is  as  irreproachable  as  regular 
breathing.  But  why  are  women  thought  to  need 
it?  That  is  the  baffling  part  of  the  thing.  Do 
not  women  know  that  the  way  to  study  a  poet  is 
to  read  his  poems  thoughtfully,  and  are  there  any 
of  them  that  need  be  told  that  art  has  its  inner 
meaning,  life  its  deeper  joys?  Take  this,  for 
example:  "Browning  is  primarily  a  poet  and 
311 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

should  be  approached  as  a  poet."  Why  tell  a 
woman  that?  Could  she  not  guess  it?  Would 
she  be  likely  to  approach  him  as  a  plumber? 
And  this  suggests  the  general  question  that 
always  troubles  the  male  reader  of  these  articles : 
If  adult  human  beings  who  have  had  a  fair 
chance  in  life  still  remain  at  the  stage  which  this 
kind  of  writing  implies,  why  bother  with  them  at 
all?  You  cannot  save  them,  certainly  not  by 
these  means,  for  if  they  had  in  them  a  spark  of 
affection  for  books  they  would  rebel  against  this 
way  of  writing  about  books.  That  is  the  trouble 
with  the  woman's  writer.  There  is  nothing  left 
of  a  good  thing  when  he  has  once  adapted  it. 
And  where  is  the  benefit  in  knowing  about  books 
when  you  do  not  care  for  what  is  inside  them? 
It  is  meritorious  only  in  a  librarian.  It  is  no 
one's  duty  to  be  literary. 

It  seems  a  waste  of  time  to  blame  people  for 
writing  platitudes,  but  that  is  not  the  point. 
The  platitude  must  always  be.  What  I  protest 
against  is  that  it  should  be  so  unevenly  distri 
buted  between  the  sexes  by  our  periodicals.  And 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

why  pretend  that  reading  this  kind  of  an  article 
does  anything  to  the  mind?  As  well  advise  peo 
ple  to  sleep  with  a  volume  of  poems  under  their 
pillow  in  order  to  wake  up  "cultured"  in  the 
morning. 

Women,  of  course,  are  themselves  in  part  to 
blame  for  the  woman's  writer.  They  take  him 
more  seriously  than  men  do,  and  when  they  do 
not  take  him  seriously  they  are  more  patient  with 
him  than  men  would  be.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
those  molluscous  writers  who  fasten  themselves  to 
the  reputations  of  dead  geniuses,  and  say  amiable 
things  about  books  which  they  do  not  understand, 
have  a  disproportionately  large  feminine  con 
stituency.  By  merely  praising  Homer,  Plato, 
Dante  and  Shakespeare,  and  by  laying  claim  to 
certain  large,  vague  sensations  when  they  read 
them,  it  is  possible  to  establish  a  literary  stand 
ing.  If  they  follow  this  up  with  an  occasional 
good  word  for  high  ideals  and  the  ends  of  art 
and  the  true  conception  of  life,  they  may  attain 
quite  a  high  place  in  contemporary  estimation. 
The  thing  has  been  done.  And  though  the 
313 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

woman's  writer  may  have  known  at  the  start  that 
what  he  said  did  not  mean  anything,  this  self- 
knowledge  does  not  last.  In  his  final  stage  he 
believes  in  himself.  That  is  the  last  and  lowest 
point  he  reaches. 

After  all,  is  he  not  harmless  and  even  useful 
as  an  educator?  There  is  this  much  harm  in  him : 
In  so  far  as  people  read  him  they  are  kept  from 
doing  other  things.  That  of  itself  is  bad.  They 
reach  those  absurd,  straggling  suburbs  of  litera 
ture,  and  there  they  stop.  They  read  articles 
about  books  which  describe  other  books,  and  so 
cultivate  a  sort  of  third  cousinship  to  literature. 
Then  the  woman's  writer  is  an  awful  example  of 
what  literature  may  do  to  a  man.  If  association 
with  masterpieces  all  his  days  leaves  him  in  such 
a  state,  it  must  scare  people  away  from  master 
pieces.  There  are  dangers  involved  in  his  exist 
ence  from  whatever  point  you  view  him,  though 
I  admit  that  at  first  thoughts  there  is  nothing  in 
all  nature  that  seems  more  innocuous  than  he. 


314 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

IX 

ON    BEHALF    OF    OBSCURE    VERSE 

IT  is  a  tame  little  affair,  to  be  sure — the  average 
poem  of  the  magazines,  and  when  I  say  average 
poem,  I  mean  almost  every  poem  that  appears 
in  them,  for  rarely  does  one  venture  to  differ 
much  from  every  other  one.  But  it  is  easy  to  be 
too  pessimistic  about  them,  and  if  anyone  will 
take  the  trouble  to  run  through  the  old  files  he 
will  arise  feeling  fairly  cheerful  in  regard  to  the 
minor  verse  of  his  own  generation.  It  is  better 
than  it  used  to  be  because  it  has  a  larger  supply 
of  antecedent  verse  to  draw  upon  for  imitation. 
It  is  a  fuller  and  more  composite  echo.  There  is 
more  of  it  than  there  used  to  be,  but  there  is  noth 
ing  depressing  in  that,  because  it  has  not  outrun 
the  increase  in  population.  Another  consoling 
thought  is  that  a  large  part  of  the  humdrum 
verse  of  to-day  affords  more  training  to  the 
reader's  wits.  As  between  the  commonplace  verse 
that  is  perfectly  intelligible  and  the  commonplace 
verse  that  is  obscure,  the  latter  has  this  disciplin- 
315 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

ary  advantage.  At  least  you  work  your  mim], 
and  even  if  you  find  nothing,  the  exercise  has 
done  you  good.  The  mere  value  of  a  metrical 
rebus,  you  will  say.  Well,  even  that  is  some 
thing. 

And  this  leads  to  the  point  I  wish  to  empha 
size.  So  long  as  the  kernel  of  magazine  verse  re 
mains  what  it  is,  I  would  not  have  it  easier  to  be 
got  at.  I  put  in  a  plea  for  the  continuance  of 
this  obscurity,  and  I  do  so  with  the  more  haste 
and  earnestness  because  I  have  lately  noticed  a 
tendency  to  complain  of  it.  "Now  what  in  the 
world  does  she  mean  by  that?"  asks  a  reviewer 
with  bitterness  as  he  quotes  two  complicated  sen 
tences  without  verbs  addressed  by  a  young  lady 
to  one  of  her  emotions.  Mercy  on  us!  The 
meaning  is  just  what  was  meant  to  be  withheld. 
Such  a  question  ignores  the  rules  of  the  game. 
If  reviewers  begin  to  act  like  that,  they  will  soon 
destroy  the  industry  altogether.  The  composi 
tion  of  this  kind  of  magazine  verse  consists  in 
this  very  secretiveness  as  to  meanings.  The  per 
former  takes  a  fairly  simple  and  fairly  obvious 
316 


THE    BUSINESS    OF   WRITING 

thought  and  first  writes  it  down  in  direct,  cold 
prose.  This  done,  it  is  carefully  examined  to  see 
how  well  it  lends  itself  to  verbal  entanglements. 
If  it  seems  to  have  possibilities  in  this  respect, 
the  work  of  ensnarling  is  begun.  Words  are 
wound  around  it  phrase  by  phrase  till  just  the 
faintest  suggestion  of  the  thought  peeps  out 
through  a  crack  in  the  verbiage.  Then  it  is  the 
reader's  turn  to  guess  what  is  inside.  If  it  takes 
a  good  deal  of  time  and  worry,  so  much  the  bet 
ter.  He  feels  something  of  a  sportsman's  zest. 
He  is  rather  glad  to  get  it,  even  if  it  does  not 
amount  to  much.  To  illustrate,  let  us  take  a 
concrete  case.  You  want  to  say  something  about 
the  dread  of  separation — whether  of  the  soul 
from  the  body  or  the  lover  from  his  mistress,  it 
matters  not  what.  Take  just  that  one  situation. 
You  snatch  at  many  paraphrases  and  discard 
them  one  by  one  for  lack  of  subtlety.  Finally, 
after  mousing  around  among  words  and  mutter 
ing  things  like  "foregleam  of  the  ache  of  ab 
sence"  and  "ill-seeming  shade  of  otherwhere" 
(which  you  see  at  a  glance  would  never  do  in  the 
317 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

world  as  synonyms  for  incipient  bereavement), 
let  us  suppose  you  hit  on  something  rather  queer, 
such,  for  example  as  "the  germ  of  alibi."  It 
sounds  foolish  at  first,  but  upon  consideration 
may  seem  worth  while,  for  it  is  an  unusual  col 
location  of  words  and  hides  the  thought  almost 
beyond  chance  of  detection.  Now  if  for  every 
other  simple  phrase  you  can  find  so  successful  a 
substitute,  if  every  turn  of  your  thought  can  be 
made  to  twist  itself  into  such  remotely  suggestive, 
such  slenderly  related  language,  you  may  pro 
duce  a  poem  in  the  modern  magazine  manner. 
But  it  means  work. 

The  "germ  of  alibi"  may  not  be  a  very  con 
vincing  illustration,  though  I  may  say  in  pass 
ing  that  it  is  taken  from  the  collected  verses  of 
an  excellent  and  very,  very  serious  writer.  Still 
in  a  measure  it  represents  the  aspiration  of  maga 
zine  verse.  It  betokens  an  eagerness  for  enig 
matic  charm.  It  is  an  elaborate  tucking  away 
of  the  humdrum,  an  obscuration  of  the  insignifi 
cant,  and  that  I  believe  is  the  characteristic  of 
this  sort  of  verse.  And  in  saying  so  I  wish  to  reg- 
318 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

ister  my  hearty  approval.  Obscurity  of  style 
in  these  cases  is  a  merciful  thing.  Not  only  that, 
but  it  gives  a  positive  pleasure  to  two  classes  of 
readers.  First,  there  are  those  who  find  excite 
ment  in  the  difficulties  of  the  quest,  who  like  to 
track  the  elusive  thought  to  its  lair.  Secondly, 
there  is  the  larger  class  that  love  the  vague  merely 
because  it  is  vague  and  looks  the  bigger  for  its 
vagueness. 

Therefore  I  am  disturbed  by  the  brutal  stand- 
and-deliver  attitude  of  certain  reviewers  who  are 
forever  holding  up  poems  and  demanding  their 
meanings.  And  there  is  a  special  savagery  in  the 
prevailing  practice  of  reviewing  six  or  seven  little 
volumes  of  collected  magazine  poems  all  in  a 
bunch  under  the  title  of  "Some  Recent  Verse." 
A  review  like  that  is  a  potter's  field  of  poets. 
Again  and  again  you  will  find  a  half  dozen  poets 
huddled  together  under  a  collective  title  and  dis 
posed  of  all  at  once,  as  a  housemaid  might  kill 
flies  with  a  twisted  newspaper.  Obscure  maga 
zine  verse  is  not  rightly  appreciated.  Review 
ers  do  not  remark  the  stress  and  strain  that  go  to 
319 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

its  production.  It  represents  fierce  and  unre 
mitting  toil,  and  its  murkiness  is  not  accidental, 
but  deliberately  and  painfully  wrought.  A 
magazine  versifier  of  to-day  would  never  write : 

"  I  saw  the  hole  myself,"  he  cried. 

"  'Twas  four  feet  long  and  two  feet  wide." 

He  would  never  exclaim: 

"  Twelve,   didst   thou    say  ?      Curse    on    those    dozen 
villains." 

He  would  never   fall  with  Wordsworth  into 
such  lines  as: 

O  mercy,  to  myself  I  said, 
What  if  Lucy  should  be  dead  ? 

He  is  more  likely  to  reproduce  the  melody 
of  Meredith's  much-quoted  line: 

The  friable,  and  the  grumous,  dizzards  both. 

And  for  my  part  I  prefer  the  latter  model, 
for  at  least  it  stirs  the  curiosity. 


320 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 


IN    DARKEST  JAMES 

SOME  time  ago,  when  Henry  James  wrote  an 
essay  on  women  that  brought  to  my  cheek  the  hot, 
rebellious  blush,  I  said  nothing  about  it,  thinking 
that  perhaps,  after  all,  the  man's  style  was  his 
sufficient  fig-leaf,  and  that  few  would  see  how 
shocking  he  really  was.  And,  indeed,  it  had  been 
a  long  time  since  the  public  knew  what  Henry 
James  was  up  to  behind  that  verbal  hedge  of  his, 
though  half-suspecting  that  he  meant  no  good, 
because  a  style  like  that  seemed  just  the  place  for 
guilty  secrets.  But  those  of  us  who  had  formed 
the  habit  of  him  early  could  make  him  out  even 
then,  our  eyes  having  grown  so  used  to  the  deep 
ening  shadows  of  his  later  language  that  they 
could  see  in  the  dark,  as  you  might  say.  I  say  this 
not  to  brag  of  it,  but  merely  to  show  that  there 
were  people  who  partly  understood  him  even  in 
The  Sacred  Fount,  and  he  was  clearer  in  his  es 
says,  especially  in  that  wicked  one  an  "George 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

Sand :  The  New  Life,"  published  in  an  American 
magazine. 

Here  he  was  as  bold  as  brass,  telling  women 
to  go  ahead  and  do  and  dare,  and  praising  the 
fine  old  hearty  goings-on  at  the  court  of  Augus 
tus  the  Strong,  and  showing  how  they  could  be 
brought  back  again  if  women  would  only  try. 
His  impunity  was  due  to  the  sheer  laziness  of  the 
expurgators.  They  would  not  read  him,  and 
they  did  not  believe  anybody  else  could.  They 
justified  themselves,  perhaps,  by^  recalling  pas 
sages  like  these  in  the  Awkward  Age: 

"What  did  this  feeling  wonderfully  appear  unless 
strangely  irrelevant 

"But  she  fixed  him  with  her  weary  penetration.  ..." 

"He  jumped  up  at  this,  as  if  he  couldn't  bear  it,  pre 
senting  as  he  walked  across  the  room  a  large,  foolish, 
fugitive  back,  on  which  her  eyes  rested  as  on  a  proof  of 
her  penetration " 

"My  poor  child,  you're  of  a  profundity ** 

"He  spoke  almost  uneasily,  but  she  was  not  too  much 
alarmed  to  continue  lucid." 

"You're  of  a  limpidity,  dear  man  !  " 

"Don't  you  think  that's  rather  a  back  seat  for  one's 
best?" 

"  'A  back  seat  ?  '  she  wondered,  with  a  purity." 

"Your  aunt  didn't  leave  me  with  you  to  teach  you  the 
slang  of  the  day." 

"  'The  slang?'  she  spotlessly  speculated." 

Arguing  from  this  that  he  was  bent  more  on 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

eluding  pursuit  than  on  making  converts,  they 
let  things  pass  that  in  other  writers  would  have 
been  immediately  rebuked.  He  had,  in  fact, 
written  furiously  against  the  proprieties  for  sev 
eral  years.  "There  is  only  one  propriety,"  he 
said,  "that  the  painter  of  life  can  ask  of  a  sub 
ject:  Does  it  or  does  it  not  belong  to  life?"  He 
charged  our  Anglo-Saxon  writers  with  "a  con 
spiracy  of  silence,"  and  taunted  them  with  the 
fact  that  the  women  were  more  improper  than  the 
men.  "Emancipations  are  in  the  air,"  said  he, 
"but  it  is  to  women  writers  that  we  owe  them." 
The  men  were  cowards,  rarely  venturing  a  single 
coarse  expression,  but  already  in  England  there 
were  pages  upon  pages  of  women's  work  so 
strong  and  rich  and  horrifying  and  free  that  a 
man  could  hardly  read  them.  Halcyon  days, 
they  seemed  to  him,  and  woman  the  harbinger  of 
a  powerful  Babylonish  time  when  the  impro 
prieties  should  sing  together  like  the  morning 
stars.  Not  an  enthusiastic  person  generally,  he 
always  warmed  to  this  particular  theme  with 
generous  emotion. 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

His  essay  on  George  Sand  discussing  what  he 
calls  the  "new  life,"  cited  the  heart  history  of 
that  author  as  "having  given  her  sex  for  its  new 
evolution  and  transformation  the  real  standard 
and  measure  of  change."  It  was  all  recorded  in 
Mme.  Karenine's  biography,  and  Mme.  Karenine, 
being  a  Russian  with  an  "admirable  Slav  super 
iority  to  prejudice,"  was  able  to  treat  the  matter 
in  a  "large,  free  way."  A  life  so  amorously  pro 
fuse  was  sure  to  set  an  encouraging  example, 
he  thought.  (Her  heart  was  like  an  hotel,  occu 
pied,  he  said,  by  "many  more  or  less  greasy 
males"  in  quick  succession.  He  hoped  the  time 
would  come  when  other  women's  hearts  would  be 
as  miscellaneous: 

"In  this  direction  their  aim  has  been,  as  yet, 
comparatively  modest  and  their  emulation  low ; 
the  challenge  they  have  hitherto  picked  up  is  but 
the  challenge  of  the  average  male.  The  approxi 
mation  of  the  extraordinary  woman  has  been, 
practically,  in  other  words,  to  the  ordinary  man. 
Madame  Sand's  service  is  that  she  planted  the 
flag  much  higher;  her  own  approximation,  at 
least,  was  to  the  extraordinary.  She  reached 
him,  she  surpassed  him,  and  she  showed  how,  with 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

native  dispositions,  the  thing  could  be  done. 
These  new  records  will  live  as  the  precious  text 
book,  so  far  as  we  have  got,  of  the  business." 

This  was  plain  enough.  Any  other  man  would 
have  been  suppressed.  In  a  literature  so  well 
policed  as  ours,  the  position  of  Henry  James  was 
anomalous.  He  was  the  only  writer  of  the  day 
whose  unconventional  notions  did  not  matter.  His 
dissolute  and  complicated  Muse  might  say  just 
what  she  chose.  Perhaps  this  was  because  it 
would  have  been  so  difficult  to  expose  him. 
Never  did  so  much  "vice"  go  with  such  sheltering 
vagueness.  Whatever  else  may  be  said  of  James 
at  this  time,  he  was  no  tempter,  and  though  the 
novels  of  this  period  deal  only  with  unlawful 
passions,  they  make  but  chilly  reading  on  the 
whole.  It  is  a  land  where  the  vices  have  no  bodies 
and  the  passions  no  blood,  where  nobody  sins  be 
cause  nobody  has  anything  to  sin  with.  Why 
should  we  worry  when  a  spook  goes  wrong  ?  For 
years  James  did  not  create  one  shadow-casting 
character.  His  love  affairs,  illicit  though  they 
be,  are  so  stripped  to  their  motives  that  they  seem 
325 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

no  more  enticing  than  a  diagram.  /A  wraith 
proves  faithless  to  her  marriage  vow,  elopes  with 
a  bogie  in  a  cloud  of  words.  Six  phantoms  meet 
and  dine,  three  male,  three  female,  with  two 
thoughts  apiece,  and,  after  elaborate  geometry 
of  the  heart,  adultery  follows  like  a  Q.  E.  D. 
Shocking  it  ought  to  be,  but  yet  it  is  not. 
Ghastly,  tantalising,  queer,  but  never  near 
enough  human  to  be  either  good  or  bad.  To  be 
a  sinner,  even  in  the  books  you  need  some  carnal 
attributes — lungs,  liver,  tastes,  at  least  a  pair  of 
legs.  Even  the  fiends  have  palpable  tails;  wise 
men  have  so  depicted  them.  No  flesh,  no  frailty ; 
that  may  be  why  our  sternest  moralists  licensed 
Henry  James  to  write  his  wickedest.  They  saw 
that  whatever  the  moral  purport  of  these  books, 
they  might  be  left  wide  open  in  the  nursery. 

To  those  who  never  liked  him  he  is  the  same 
in  these  writings  as  in  those  before  and  since. 
They  complain  that  even  at  nis  best  he  is  too  apt 
to  think  that  when  he  has  made  a  motive  he  has 
made  a  man.  Nevertheless,  though  the  world  of 
his  better  novels  is  small,  it  is  always  credible — 
326 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

humanity  run  through  a  sieve,  but  still  humanity. 
During  this  dark  period  his  interests  seemed  to 
drop  off  one  by  one,  leaving  him  shut  in  with  his 
single  theme — the  rag,  the  bone  and  the  hank  of 
hair,  the  complicated  amours  of  skeletons.  They 
called  it  his  later  manner,  but  the  truth  is,  it  was 
a  change  in  the  man  himself.  He  saw  fewer 
things  in  this  spacious  world  than  he  used  to  see, 
and  the  people  were  growing  more  meagre  and 
queer  and  monotonous,  and  it  was  harder  and 
harder  to  break  away  from  the  stump  his  fancy 
was  tied  to. 

In  The  Wings  of  the  Dove  there  were  signs 
of  a  partial  recovery.  There  were  people  who 
saw  no  difference  between  it  and  The  Sacred 
Fount  or  The  Awkward  Age,  but  they  were  no 
friends  of  his.  By  what  vice  of  introspection  he 
got  himself  lashed  to  that  fixed  idea  it  is  impossi 
ble  to  say,  but  it  was  clear  that  neither  of  those 
books  was  the  work  of  a  mind  entirely  free.  In 
one  aspect  it  was  ridiculous ;  but  if  one  laughed, 
it  was  with  compunctions,  for  in  another  aspect  it 
was  exceedingly  painful.  This  only  from  the 
327 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

point  of  view  of  his  admirers.  It  is  not  forgotten 
that  there  is  the  larger  class  (for  whom  this  world 
in  the  main  was  made)  to  whom  he  is  merely  ridic 
ulous.  They  do  not  see  why  thoughts  so  unwill 
ing  to  come  out  need  be  extracted. 

To  be  sure  in  The  Wings  of  the  Dove  there  is 
the  same  absorption  in  the  machinery  of  motive 
and  in  mental  processes  the  most  minute. 
Through  page  after  page  he  surveys  a  mind  as  a 
sick  man  looks  at  his  counterpane,  busy  with  little 
ridges  and  grooves  and  undulations.  There  are 
chapters  like  wonderful  games  of  solitaire, 
broken  by  no  human  sound  save  his  own  chuckle 
when  he  takes  some  mysterious  trick  or  makes  a 
move  that  he  says  is  "beautiful."  He  has  a  way 
of  saying  "There  you  are"  that  is  most  exasper 
ating,  for  it  is  always  at  the  precise  moment  at 
which  you  know  you  have  utterly  lost  yourself. 
There  is  no  doubt  that  James's  style  is  often  too 
puffed  up  with  its  secrets.  Despite  its  air  of  im 
mense  significance,  the  dark,  unfathomed  cave  of 
his  ocean  contain  sometimes  only  the  same  sort 
of  gravel  you  could  have  picked  up  on  the  shore. 
328 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

I  have  that  from  deep  sea  thinkers  who  have 
been  down  him.  But  though  this  unsociable  way 
of  writing  continues  through  The  Wings  of  the 
Dove,  it  came  nearer  than  any  other  novel  that 
he  had  published  for  some  years  to  the  quality  of 
his  earlier  work.  It  deals  with  conditions  as  well 
as  with  people.  Instead  of  merely  souls  any 
where,  we  have  men  and  women  living  in  describa- 
ble  homes.  It  would  be  hard  to  find  in  those  other 
novels  anything  in  the  spirit  of  the  following 
passage,  which  is  fairly  typical  of  much  in 
this: 

"It  was  after  the  children's  dinner  .  .  . 
and  the  two  young  women  were  still  in  the  pres 
ence  of  the  crumpled  tablecloth,  the  dispersed 
pinafores,  the  scraped  dishes,  the  lingering  odour 
of  boiled  food.  Kate  had  asked,  with  ceremony, 
if  she  might  put  up  a  window  a  little,  and  Mrs. 
Condrip  had  replied,  without  it,  that  she  might 
do  as  she  liked.  She  often  received  such  inquiries 
as  if  they  reflected  in  a  manner  on  the  pure 
essence  of  her  little  ones.  .  .  .  Their  mother 
had  become  for  Kate — who  took  it  just  for  the 
effect  of  being  their  mother — quite  a  different 
thing  from  the  mild  Marian  of  the  past;  Mr. 
Condrip's  widow  expansively  obscured  that  im- 

329 


THE   BUSINESS    OF   WRITING 

age.  She  was  little  more  than  a  ragged  relic, 
a  plain  prosaic  result  of  him,  as  if  she  had  some 
how  been  pulled  through  him  as  through  an  ob 
stinate  funnel,  only  to  be  left  crumpled  and 
useless  and  with  nothing  in  her  but  what  he 
accounted  for." 

Not  that  the  passage  shows  him  at  his  best,  but 
it  shows  him  as  at  least  concerned  with  the  set 
ting  of  his  characters. 

It  is  not  worth  while  to  attempt  an  outline  of 
the  story.  Those  who  have  done  so  have  disa 
greed  in  essentials.  It  is  impossible  to  hit  off  in 
a  few  words  characters  that  James  has  picked  out 
for  their  very  complexity ;  and  the  story  counts 
for  little  with  him  as  against  the  business  of 
recording  the  play  of  mind.  One  does  not 
take  a  watch  to  pieces  merely  to  tell  the 
time  of  day ;  and  with  James  analysis  is  the  end  in 
itself. 

If  the  obscurity  of  the  language  were  due  to 
the  idea  itself,  and  if  while  he  tugs  at  an  obsti 
nate  thought  you  could  be  sure  it  was  worth  the 
trouble,  there  would  be  no  fault  to  find,  but  to 
him  one  thing  seems  as  good  as  another  when  he 
330 


THE    BUSINESS    OF   WRITING 

is  mousing  around  in  a  mind.  It  is  a  form  of 
self-indulgence.  He  is  as  pleased  with  the  mo 
tives  that  lead  nowhere  as  with  anything  else. 
It  is  his  even  emphasis  that  most  misleads.  He 
writes  a  staccato  chronicle  of  things  both  great 
and  small,  like  a  constitutional  history  half  made 
up  of  the  measures  that  never  passed.  And  in 
one  respect  he  does  not  play  fairly.  He  makes 
his  characters  read  each  other's  minds  from  clues 
that  he  keeps  to  himself.  To  invent  an  irreverent 
instance,  suppose  I  were  a  distinguished  author 
with  a  psychological  bent  and  wished  to  represent 
two  young  people  as  preternaturally  acute.  I 
might  place  them  alone  together  and  make  them 
talk  like  this: 


"If "  she  sparkled. 

"If!"  he  asked.  He  had  lurched  from  the  meaning 
for  a  moment. 

"I  might" she  replied  abundantly. 

His  eye  had  eaten  the  meaning — "Me!"  he  gloriously 
burst. 

"Precisely,"  she  thrilled.  "How  splendidly  you  do 
understand." 


I,  the  distinguished  author,  versed  in  my  own 
psychology — the  springs  of  my  own  marionettes 
331 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

— I  understand  it  perfectly.  For  me  there  are 
words  a-plenty.  But  is  it  fair  to  you,  the 
reader? 

Nevertheless — and  this  is  the  main  point  about 
Henry  James — by  indefinable  means  and  in  spite 
of  wearisome  prolixity  he  often  succeeds  in  his 
darkest  books  in  producing  very  strange  and 
powerful  effects.  It  is  a  lucky  man  who  can  find 
a  word  for  them.  Things  you  had  supposed  in 
communicable  certainly  come  your  way.  These 
are  the  times  when  we  are  grateful  to  him  for 
pottering  away  in  his  nebulous  workshop  among 
the  things  that  are  hard  to  express.  Even  when 
he  fails  we  like  him  for  making  the  attempt.  We 
like  him  for  going  his  own  gait,  though  he  leaves 
us  straggling  miles  behind.  We  cannot  afford  at 
this  time  to  blame  any  writer  who  is  a  little  reck 
less  of  the  average  mind. 

Consider  the  case  of  Browning  and  all  that 
his  lusty  independence  has  done  for  us.  Brown 
ing  was  quite  careless  of  the  average  mind;  he 
would  as  lief  wreck  it.  He  was  careless  of  any 
body  else's  mind,  so  bent  was  he  on  indulging  his 
332 


THE    BUSINESS    OF    WRITING 

own.  His  question  was  not,  What  will  you  have? 
but  What  do  I  feel  like  doing?  and  readers  had 
to  take  their  chances,  some  to  give  him  up  as  too 
deep,  and  others  to  beat  their  brains  for  inner 
meanings  where  there  were  none.  He  liked  life 
so  well  that  he  prized  its  most  vapid  moments 
and  expressed  his  mind  at  its  best  and  at  its 
worst,  wrote  sometimes  as  other  men  drum  on  win 
dow-panes,  catalogued  a  lot  of  objects  he  liked 
the  look  of,  relaxed  in  verse,  ate  in  it,  sometimes 
slept  in  it,  used  it,  in  short,  for  so  many  strange 
little  personal  purposes,  that  reading  it  some 
times  seems  an  intrusion.  Hence,  he  is  quite  as 
much  a  puzzle  to  the  too  thoughtful  as  he  is  to 
those  who  prefer  not  to  think,  for  a  great  man's 
nonsense  is  sure  to  drive  his  commentators  mad 
looking  for  a  message.  Browning  differed  from 
others  not  so  much  in  the  greatness  of  his  mind  as 
in  the  fact  that  he  showed  more  of  it.  He  seems 
obscure  sometimes  because  people  are  unprepared 
.for  that  degree  of  confidence.  Then,  there  are 
certain  preconceived  notions  as  to  the  limits  of 
literature,  an  expectation  of  large,  plain  things, 


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